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
2017 Zimbabwean coup d'état dictatorship". The African Union issued a statement in which it refrained from describing the military intervention as a 'coup', but instead said Mugabe's ouster was a legitimate expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people. Foreign embassies, including the American, Canadian, British, and Dutch embassies in Harare, issued warnings to citizens of their countries to stay indoors because of the military activity in the city. A German spokesperson for the Federal Foreign Office told a press conference in Berlin that "We see developments there with concern ... The situation there is confusing and unclear." British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called