Harare small military force of the British South Africa Company, and named Fort Salisbury after the British prime minister Lord Salisbury. Company administrators demarcated the city and ran it until Southern Rhodesia achieved responsible government in 1923. Salisbury was thereafter the seat of the Southern Rhodesian (later Rhodesian) government and, between 1953 and 1963, the capital of the Central African Federation. It retained the name Salisbury until 1982, when it was renamed Harare on the second anniversary of Zimbabwean independence. Harare is Zimbabwe's leading political, financial, commercial, and communications centre, as well as a trade centre for tobacco, maize, cotton, and
Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth of Nations in the Harare Declaration, issued at the 1991 CHOGM in (ironically enough) Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. After the Zimbabwean people rejected Mugabe's proposed new constitution in a February 2000 referendum, the situation deteriorated rapidly, as violence against opponents increased. To address these issues, in September 2001, Zimbabwe sent a delegation to meet with the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), which is responsible for upholding the Harare Declaration. Zimbabwe promised to end the violence and defend human rights, as required of them as Commonwealth members, but failed to do so. As a result, the United Kingdom pushed to suspend Zimbabwe from the