Zulu people of 1878, envoys of the British crown delivered an ultimatum to 11 chiefs representing the then-current king of the Zulu empire, Cetshwayo. Under the British terms delivered to the Zulu, Cetshwayo would have been required to disband his army and accept British sovereignty. Cetshwayo refused, and war between the Zulus and African contingents of the British crown began on January 12th, 1879. Despite an early victory for the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana on the 22nd of January, the British fought back and won the Battle at Rorke's Drift, and definitively defeated the Zulu army by July at the
South African Wars (1879–1915) the direct control of the appointed British Governor. It had a more restrictive political system than the neighbouring Cape Colony and its small (mostly British) white population had an uneasy relationship with the powerful independent Zulu Kingdom on their northern border. The Anglo-Zulu War (1879) led to the later annexation of Zululand to Natal in 1897. At the close of the South African Wars, the colony became part of the 1910 Union, and is now known as Kwazulu-Natal, a province of South Africa. The land of indigenous Khoi Khoi and Sotho people, Basutoland was positioned between the Cape Colony, Orange