It was discovered on 9 June 1931, by South African astronomer Cyril Jackson at the Union Observatory in Johannesburg.

[1] This minor planet was named for the former British colony and unrecognized state of Rhodesia (1965–1979) in southern Africa, what is now Zimbabwe.

[2][3] In December 2017, a rotational lightcurve of Rhodesia was obtained from photometric observations by Tom Polakis at the Command Module Observatory (V02) in Tempe, Arizona.

[9] This result refines previous period determinations of 15.89 and 16.062 hours by Richard Binzel (1984) and Laurent Bernasconi (2005), respectively (U=2/2).

[5][6][7][8][11][15][16] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0666 and a diameter of 47.40 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.18.