On Sunday, 27 February 1881, 150 Boer volunteers stormed Majuba (the Hill of Doves)
in a successful bid to drive out and defeat 400 British troops.

The poverty and vulnerability of the South African Republic (Transvaal) prompted Disraeli's Conservative government to annex it in 1877 as an important step in achieving their long-planned federation of the South African colonies. However, Britain underestimated the fierce independence of the majority of Afrikaners in the Transvaal. Led by Paul Kruger, they rose in revolt in December 1880. Within a few weeks of the Boer uprising, their commandos had administered three small, but destructive, reverses on the British army, culminating in the battle of Majuba in British territory just inside the frontier of Natal Colony. General Piet Joubert moved south to the Natal border and, on 26 February 1881, took up a position at Laing's Nek to check on the arrival of British reinforcements. Soon afterwards, a British force under General Sir Pomeroy Colley, Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Natal came into view. This force was held up at Laing's Nek while negotiations for an armistice were in progress and while large reinforcements under General Sir Evelyn Wood were on the way.

Taking advantage of the delay, Colley and 600 men occupied Majuba on the night of 26th February. At dawn, Colley could see the Boer laager of tents and covered wagons, but as he could not bring his heavy guns up the steep slopes, he was unable to fire on their encampment. Joubert, however, immediately ordered his men to climb the steep hill, take cover and shoot down on the British. At 7 a.m., a force of 150 Boers in three divisions under veld-cornets S J Roos, J Ferreira and D J Malan began to climb from ledge to ledge up the mountain, firing steadily and effectively on the British as they climbed. Untrained in guerrilla warfare, the exposed British soldiers made easy marks, and when Colley himself was killed and the Boers were almost at the summit, the British fled.

The magnitude of their defencelessness may be appraised from the fact that they had over 200 casualties killed and wounded, whereas the Boers lost only one man killed and one who died later of his wounds. There are two simple monuments on the battlefield: an obelisk erected by the Boers, and a rectangular column commemorating the British fatalities. The humiliating British defeat at Majuba brought about the end of the First Anglo-Boer War and introduced a short-lived peace. Gladstone's Liberal government abandoned the previous government's federation policy, and, by the signing of the Pretoria Convention in August 1881, the Transvaal was granted 'complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of Her Majesty Queen Victoria'. Many British, however, assured of the innate power of their imperial status, continued to regard the Boer commandos as inferior adversaries. Looking on the Majuba Hill disaster as a 'freak' victory, they vowed retribution. The Transvaal War (also known as the First Boer War or the First War of Independence) was a 'curtain-raiser' to the far more ruthless Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. "Remember Majuba!" became a rallying cry of the British during Second Anglo-Boer War.