Kabwe

The name Kabwe or Kabwe-Ka Mukuba means 'ore' or 'smelting' but the European/Australian prospectors named it Broken Hill after a similar mine in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia.[4] The mine was the largest in the country for around thirty years until it was overtaken in the early 1930s by larger copper mining complexes on the Copperbelt. Apart from lead and zinc it also produced silver, manganese and heavy metals such as cadmium, vanadium, and titanium in smaller quantities.[5]

In 1921 a human fossil, a skull, dubbed Kabwe 1, also "Broken Hill Man" or "Rhodesian Man" (classified as Homo rhodesiensis or Homo heidelbergensis) was found in the mine.

The mine, which occupies a 2.5 km² site 1 km south-west of the town centre, is closed but metals are still extracted from old tailings. A study by the Blacksmith Institute found Kabwe to be one of the ten most polluted places in the world due mostly to heavy metal (mostly zinc and lead) tailings making their way into the local water supply.[6] A 2014 report indicates that children's blood lead levels continue to be elevated even though mining has stopped.[7]

Closure of the mine led to economic decline for Kabwe.[4] It has a number of manufacturing industries including the Zambia-China Mulungushi textiles plant established with Chinese investment in the 1980s, but after suffering large losses this plant closed (temporarily according to management) at the beginning of 2007.

Part of the railway near Kabwe under construction (ca. 1906)

The first railway in the country, operated by Rhodesian Railways when the territory was administered as North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia, reached the Broken Hill mine as early as 1906, and the town became the northern base for the railway, which was the second biggest employer after the mining industry. A locomotive maintenance facility was constructed there. In 1909 the railway reached Ndola in what was to become the Copperbelt.

The railway workers' unions played a large role in the politics of the country. In racially segregated colonial times before Africans had the vote, the town was the seat of Roy Welensky, leader of the powerful Rhodesia Railway Workers Union (RRWU), who became prime minister of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which was opposed by the Northern Rhodesia Railway trade union (the black Africans' union) led by Dixon Konkola and also based in Kabwe.[2]

Today, the town is the headquarters of Zambia Railways but employment levels on the railway have been heavily cut.

On February 7, 2013, a bus collided with two cars near Kabwe, killing 53 people. It was one of the worst road accidents in Zambian history.[8][9]