Assigai making Mashonaland

Fort Salisbury, now known as Harare, was founded by a military volunteer force of settlers under the command of Cecil Rhodes on 12 September 1890, just two years before Middleton Jameson painted the present lot. The city was originally named after the British Prime Minister, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury. Declared a municipality in 1897, it became a city in 1935, and was the capital of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953 to 1963. To mark the second anniversary of Zimbabwean independence on 18 April 1982, the name of the city was changed to Harare, after the Shona chieftan, Neharawa.