An additional factor to this end was the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. By placing their most hated enemy, the Boer, under British control it transferred the expression of that hatred to the new Government and the English people. A part of the general restlessness of the natives in the year of the annexation had been expressed in the war between Sekukuni, a Kaffir chief to the northeast, and the Boer Republic. The chief in question was a tool of Cetywayo's, and there is little doubt was egged on by him to hostilities which the latter intended as preliminary to a general attack upon the Transvaal; in which he was further encouraged by the defeat of the Boers and the retirement of President Burgers from his invasion of Sekukuni's territory. But the British annexation temporarily averted the attack and the whole burden of Zulu hostility was practically assumed by the British; as well as the subsequent brunt of Zulu attack. The situation, therefore, was not a pleasant one for Sir Bartle Frere any more than it was for the colonists of Natal, or for the Boers of the Transvaal prior to their annexation. It had been anticipated by Sir George Grey, a quarter of a century before, when he had urged that the growth of the Zulu power be checked by the establishment of a protectorate, or watched by the placing of a permanent Resident at its capital. [Sidenote: Zulu Declaration] But his advice was disregarded, and, in 1876, when Sir Henry Bulwer, Governor of Natal, protested against some Zulu act of force upon the frontier, Cetywayo was able to reply with a temerity born of the possession of a splendidly developed fighting machine of many thousand men: "I do kill; but do not consider yet I have done anything in the way of killing. Why do the white men start at nothing? I have not yet begun. I have yet to kill. It is the custom of our nation, and I shall not depart from it." In a dispatch to the Colonial Office on December 2, 1878, Sir Bartle Frere declared plainly that, as a result of these and other more practical manifestations, "no one can really sleep in peace and security within a day's run of the Zulu border, save by sufferance of the Zulu Chief."