When the people in the area now known as Zimbabwe chose the name of their country, they expressed a desire to reconnect with a magnificent history.
About six decades, it mattered what former colonies on the African continent called themselves after they had fought for independence from Europeans.
If the Shakespearean query “what is in a name?” was put up, many of Africa’s founding leaders would tell you, “a lot”. Robert Mugabe and the rest of the political and military forces who wanted a free country understood what is in a name.
The name of the new country had to embody the aspirational spirit of the people. And for many of these territories that had been arbitrarily carved by European imperialists, a new name had to be an idea different groups could get behind.
Before 1980, the area called Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia, infamously named after Cecil Rhodes, a politician and private benefactor of Britain’s imperial ambitions.
Indeed, Rhodesia itself was a British colony that covered territories in southern Africa which included today’s Zambia and Zimbabwe.
