the previous name. The name of the South African Republic was of such political significance that on 1 September 1900, the British declared by special proclamation that the name of the country had been changed from to "the Transvaal". This proclamation was issued during the British occupation of the region in the Second Boer War and while the ZAR was still nominally an independent country. On 31 May 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed with the government of the South African Republic, the Orange Free State government, and the British government, ending the war, and converted the ZAR into the Transvaal Colony. Following the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the Transvaal Colony became Transvaal Province. The name Transvaal was finally changed in 1994, when the post-apartheid African National Congress-dominated South African government broke up the province into four provinces and renamed the core region Gauteng. History Establishment The South African Republic came into existence on 17 January 1852, when the British signed the Sand River Convention treaty with about 40,000 Boer people, recognising their independence in the region to the north of the Vaal River. The first president of the ZAR was Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, elected in 1857, son of Boer leader Andries Pretorius, who commanded the Boers to victory at the Battle of Blood River. The capital was established at Potchefstroom and later moved to Pretoria. The parliament was called the and had 24 members. British annexation The unpopular presidency of Thomas F. Burgers came to a head with his campaign against the Bapedi under Sekhukhune. The Republic was close to bankruptcy and his siege of Sekhukhune's stronghold failed because commando members objected to Burgers's theology, calling him a heretic, and abandoned the siege in droves. Burgers, having failed to eliminate the threat of the Bapedi, resigned and left the country. A. N. Pelzer writes: "Although Sekhukhune made overtures for peace, he was not defeated and this fact, together with the shaky financial position, gave Sir Theophilus Shepstone the pretext he required to annex the republic [as the Transvaal, a British colony, on 12 April 1877." Sir Garnet Wolseley, High Commissioner for South East Africa, declared war on Sekhukhune. With British troops and allied troops (including the Swazis who had supported Burgers), in 1879 Wolseley defeated Sekhukhune and imprisoned him in Pretoria. With the Bapedi threat removed, the burghers were no longer so amenable