Mumbwa Heritage Sites- The First Copperbelt The Mumbwa District has a rich mining history starting about 1500 years ago with the arrival of the Kaonde. This people brought with them the skills of iron and copper smelting as testified by copper artefacts found in the area as well as several old smelting furnaces (kilns).

In fact, this area has been identified as the first Copperbelt of Zambia, stretching approximately 80 kilometres from the Karenda Hill in the southeast to the Hippo Mine at the Kafue River in the northwest. One of the earliest copper strikes was Ninga, about seven miles northwest of Mumbwa. This is one of the first peggings in the whole of North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia. It was probably discovered by Frank Lewis about 1897 - roughly when George Grey found Kansanshi, 300 miles further north.

Frank Lewis was driven by David Livingstone's reports of copper. Livingstone himself had arrived in Northern Rhodesia in 1868, when he had met an Arab slave caravan, which carried tonnes of copper, mostly in the form of Katanga Crosses (see box), and he wrote enthusiastically about the mineral wealth of the area. On the basis of these reports, Frank Lewis travelled north until reaching the Kafue River south of Mumbwa. Here he pegged the Chanobie Concession in an area of 26 square kilometres (10 square miles) early in 1898, before travelling further north, where he discovered several mineral deposits - in a much larger area of 1800 square kilometres (550 square miles), naturally, to be named the Big Concession.

Over a relatively short period of time at the turn of the 19th century, several shafts were sunk within the Big Concession, including Sable Antelope, Silver King, Crystal Jacket, North Star, True Blue, Wonder Rocks, Lou Lou, Sugar Loaf and Beehive Mines. The prospects of these mines were so promising that the Cape to Cairo Rail Line was to pass through this area, until the discovery of the Broken Hill Mine at Kabwe and the current Copperbelt.

What, in fact, guided Lewis, Grey and all the other early prospectors were remnants of indigenous African workings, often on inconspicuous outcrops of ores. Some of these outcrops contained very rich pockets of copper. The Silver King Mine, for instance, showed, at 16 metres (52 feet), a pocket of ore averaging 48.7 percent copper and more than 300 grams of silver per ton. One of the deepest (30 m) ancient workings led to the discovery of the Crystal Jacket Mine, and the Sable Antelope Mine, the largest of the mines on the first Copperbelt, originated from an old working, where artefacts such as spears and Katanga Crosses were found.

In 1914, Silver King, Crystal Jacket and Sable Antelope were leased from the Kafue Copper Development Company Ltd. to a private investor, Mr. Ludham, who produced 1,523 tonnes of blister copper (a mixture of copper and iron oxides) and 2,170 kilograms of silver. Most of the mines in the Big Concession, however, had shallow deposits and did not remain viable for a very long period of time. The Mumbwa mines peaked in the period 1911-1912, when up to 100 Europeans and 2000 natives were employed at the Sable Antelope and Silver King Mines. 2,646 tonnes of copper were produced from the Big Concession during these years. From 1911 to 1925 a total of 4,230 tonnes of copper were produced. In the 1920s, most of the mining activities shifted to the current Copperbelt, which had seen Zambia's first commercial copper production at Kansanshi in 1908. Large-scale production on the Copperbelt, however, only commenced with the start-up of Roan Antelope Mine at Luanshya (1931), followed by Nkana (1932), Mufulira (1933) and Nchanga (1939). Copper production reached a peak of 700,00 tonnes annually in 1969-76 before declining. Still, Zambia remains an internationally major producer of copper. Submenu Early Man The First Copperbelt Hot Springs Limestone Formations