Natal History

The word Natal is incorporated into KwaZulu-Natal's lengthy name as the southern part of the province was formerly a Boer republic named Natalia. Natal remained a part of the provinces name in the mid-1840s. This southern region became the British Colony of Natal. All the while, the northern part of the province remained Zululand.

Before KwaZulu-Natal was regarded as one of the four founding provinces of South Africa, the land was first seen as two distinct territories, the northern part being Zululand and the southern part being Natalia. Natalia was a transitory Boer republic founded in the 1830s by Voortrekkers. Voortrekkers are Afrikaans-speaking farmers who left the Cape Colony and migrated to what is now the southern lands of Kwazulu-Natal. Natalia was founded shortly after the Battle of Blood River wherein Voortrekkers emerged triumphant over the Zulus.

However, in less than a decade, the republic was conquered and annexed by Great Britain. Natalia then was proclaimed as a British Colony in 1843, and integrated as a part of the Cape Colony in 1844. The power of the Voortrekkers weakened, and most of them were compelled to migrate to another land. Three decades later, in 1879, after the British colonial government defeated the Zulu army, the northern part Kwazulu-Natal, what was then the Zululand was also colonized and incorporated to Natal. In the Union of South Africa in 1910, Natal was regarded as one of the main provinces of the country, and in 1994 it was combined with the KwaZulu bantustan to become the province of KwaZulu-Natal.