2000-2400 .45 rounds a minute might have had something to do with it.
considerably more than that & a couple of field pieces didn't help at isandlwhana just before that. of course bad tactics by his lordship there really lost the battle. also, it was a good example of the bean counters effect on a battle, while it was true that they did not issue screwdrivers to open the ammo boxes, it was also true that the boxes could easily be opened with a rifle butt and a bayonet. the bean counters making them requisition and sign for each round and turn in their used brass during the battle didn't help. and the relative thinness of the martini round casing caused jams after the rifle heated up & got a bit dirty, but the bean counters did save money on brass.
recent plots of spent brass on the battle field indicates the brits were too far forward and too spread out to support themselves & they were easily outflanked & wiped out while lord chelmsford ate his breakfast a few miles away with the rest of the troops, secure in the knowledge that no cowardly native rabble with spears could best his crack regiments.
it was a bit of a pyrric victory tho as the zulus lost 3000-4000 men against the british 1200 or so.
rourke's drift was a microcosm of future battles, the zulu king warned his brother to 1. do not cross the river into british territory which would lose them the moral high ground as the brits were the aggressors to start off. 2. do not attack fixed british positions as they'll massacre you before you get close enough to use your iklwa, which is basically what happened. most zulu's at rourkes drift were killed at over 300 yds. by accurate volley fire.
the zulus could just not support their losses, and no amount of courage could replace a soldier who had taken a life-time and a whole nations culture to train vs. british rifles & artillery that took at worst a few months to learn. eventually they were just out-resourced & couldn't kill brits fast enough. it would take the boers a few years later to do that. the brits would have lost that one if they hadn't invented concentration camps and started burning out boer villages and killing their women and children in the camps by not feeding them. not a high point in british history.
Go to ebay and do a search on "kukri bayonet" and see the item that comes up. Is it for real? Is/was it a joke/gag item when it was made? 
it belongs to a bayonet collector. 
