Northern Rhodesia was intensely unpopular among the vast African majority and its formation hastened calls for majority rule. As a result of this pressure, the country became independent in 1964 as Zambia. The geographical, as opposed to political, term "Rhodesia" referred to a region generally comprising the areas that are today Zambia and Zimbabwe. From 1964, it only referred to the former Southern Rhodesia. The name "Rhodesia" was derived from Cecil John Rhodes, the British capitalist and empire-builder who was a guiding figure in British expansion north of the Limpopo River into south-central Africa. Rhodes pushed British influence into the region by
Rhodesia at the Olympics prove Rhodesia's racial discrimination in sport in order to use it to bar the National Olympic Committee permanently from the Games. Based on the evidence the organization was able to uncover, in 1975 the IOC voted 41–26 to expel Rhodesia from the Games on a permanent basis. The nation would not return to the Games until 1980, after the white-dominated government had fallen and the country had been renamed Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was still able to compete at the Paralympics in 1968 and 1972, as it had in 1960 and 1964, due to "deliberate decisions by politicians who were unwilling (for