Mazabuka is the capital of Mazabuka District, one of thirteen administrative units in Zambia's Southern Province. It lies about 135 kilometres southwest of Lusaka by road, along the Lusaka–Livingstone Highway, the T1. The geographical coordinates place it at 15°50'48"S, 27°44'51"E. The Kafue Flats, a vast seasonal wetland fed by the Kafue River, stretch out to the north and west. In the wet season the flats flood; cattle move to higher ground; fish spawn in the rising shallows. In the dry season the waters retreat, leaving rich grazing that has sustained Tonga cattle herders for centuries. Sugarcane thrives in that same alluvial country, which is why the town's modern economy grew the way it did. Zambia Sugar's operations around Mazabuka are the largest sugar manufacturing complex in the country, and cane fields now stretch to the horizon on approach from any direction.

In 1941, as German and Soviet occupations reshaped Eastern Europe, 50 Polish refugees were admitted to Mazabuka. It was a small local chapter of a much larger story: Polish civilians who had survived Soviet deportation and internment in Central Asia were, from 1942 onward, resettled in British colonies across East and Southern Africa. Camps at Abercorn in northern Zambia eventually held thousands; smaller groups ended up in towns across the territory. The Polish community in Mazabuka was modest, but it left marks, Catholic parish records, loanwords, cane-field memories that sat alongside the Tonga and Ila and Ngoni stories the town had been telling about itself. Most of the refugees moved on after the war. A few stayed. The episode is one reason that the population curve of the town bends unexpectedly in the 1940s.

Mazabuka's recorded population in 1990 was 24,596. By 2000 it was 47,148. By the 2010 census it stood at 71,700, having nearly tripled in 20 years. The town hosts two well-known Roman Catholic grant-aided day schools, St Edmunds Secondary and Mazabuka Girls Secondary, which together draw the largest grade-eight enrolments in the province. Musikili Primary is a private boarding school for children aged 5 to 13. Flamboyant School, on the outskirts, serves children with disabilities and is run by the Mazabuka Association for the Disabled. Healthcare is divided between the Mazabuka Sugar Hospital, for Zambia Sugar staff, and Mazabuka General Hospital, for the public. Two notable Zambians were born in this town. Mizinga Melu, a prominent businesswoman who serves as managing director and CEO of Absa Bank Zambia Plc, is from here. So is Stanley Fischer, the economist born on October 15, 1943 who went on to serve as Governor of the Central Bank of Israel and, later, as Vice Chair of the United States Federal Reserve.

A nickel mine 60 kilometres outside town has run through a complicated succession of owners over two decades. Albidon Limited of Australia obtained the permits in 2006 and began production at Munali in April 2008. The Chinese JINCHUAN mining group took over briefly from 2010, pledging US$37 million and employing about 350 workers. A joint venture called Mabiza Resources, between the UK's Consolidated Nickel Mines Plc and CE Mining, took ownership in 2014, but delays in capital injection led the Zambian government to threaten repossession. From 2015, a US$50 million investment reactivated operations, and the mine restarted production in 2019. Today Munali is managed by an all-Zambian team, employing about 380 people, of whom 10 percent are women, and exporting high-grade nickel concentrate alongside small quantities of copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals. The workers who staff the mine live in communities affected by every ownership change, every capital delay, every global price shift. A town whose name records an act of crossing has kept crossing into new versions of itself: herding country, sugar country, Polish refuge, mining hinterland, still the same place at the river.