Lord Richard Cecil well established links with Rhodesia, the capital city of which was named Salisbury after the third Marquess (it was renamed Harare in 1982 on the second anniversary of Zimbabwean independence). The family had extensive land holdings in the country and the fifth Marquess (Lord Richard's grandfather) was a leading British supporter of the white minority UDI government that ruled Rhodesia from 1965-1979. Lord Richard was the eldest of the younger brothers of Robert Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, who has been both an MP and the Leader of the House of Lords. In 2003, Cranborne became 7th Marquess of Salisbury upon the
Zimbabwean art pottery indicates that the people of the Late Iron Age were settled agriculturists and they have been categorised as forming groups such as the Harare culture and the Leopard’s Kopje culture: the latter established in 980 AD in a site called K2. This group moved to Mapungubwe where they used stone walls to separate the ruling class from the rest of the population. This settlement was abandoned in the thirteenth century at around the time that a now much better-known site was developed by others who lived on the Zimbabwean plateau. This was Great Zimbabwe, which dates from about 1250–1500