Rhodesia to Zimbabwe

Rhodes’s country

In 1890 a pioneer column sent by Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company reached the site of the future capital. The company’s lands, until then loosely called Zambesia, were formally named Rhodesia by proclamation in 1895.^[1] Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British colony on 12 September 1923; from 1953 it was federated with Northern Rhodesia, later Zambia, and Nyasaland, later Malawi, until the federation broke up at the end of 1963.^[1]

Rhodesia alone

The Rhodesian Front wanted independence under guaranteed white minority rule. When Britain would not grant it, Ian Smith’s government issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence on 11 November 1965. The UN imposed mandatory sanctions, its first against a state, and in 1970 Rhodesia declared itself a republic.^[2]

Stone houses

By 1979 mounting pressure had forced Smith into an “internal settlement” with Black leaders including Bishop Abel Muzorewa. After Muzorewa’s party won the April 1979 election, the country adopted the name Zimbabwe, but the fighting went on and diplomatic recognition did not come.^[2] After the Lancaster House talks in London in late 1979, Britain briefly took the colony back, new elections were held, and on 18 April 1980 Zimbabwe became independent with Robert Mugabe as prime minister.^[2]

The name comes from Great Zimbabwe, the stone city in the south-east that was the heart of a Shona trading empire from the 11th to the 15th century. In Shona, zimbabwe means “stone houses”.^[4]

“The word zimbabwe means “stone houses” in the Shona language.”^[4]