Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher s book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge Excerpt Kabwe Wikipedia the free encyclopedia The name Kabwe or Kabwe Ka Mukuba means ore or smelting but the European Australian prospectors named it after a similar mine in Broken Hill New South Wales Australia The mine became the largest in the country until 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 In 1921 a human fossil a skull called 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 km site just 1 km south west of the town centre is now closed but metals are still extracted from old tailings A study by the Blacksmith Institute found Kabwe to be one of the ten worst polluted places in the world due mostly to heavy metal mostly zinc and lead tailings making their way into the local water supply Part of the railway near Kabwe under constructionThe 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 in the late 1920s The railway workers unions played a large role in 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 Pri More http booksllc net id 1929812