The Kruger Park and Jacob Dlamini’s Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park

ABSTRACT

This review article analyses Jacob Dlamini’s 2020 publication Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park and argues that it provides a valuable and complex account of different ways in which black South Africans have interacted with the Kruger and corrects many earlier simplifications and misconceptions. After probing Dlamini’s analysis of the 2001 fire in Kruger that killed 25 workers and the attempt to use African field guides in the 1930s, the article goes on to consider the larger question, neglected in most accounts, of what the nature of the white South African experience of the Kruger was in the twentieth century. Was there a separate white safari nation and what drove that leisure choice? The article examines various attempts to account for the attraction of Kruger and how it has changed over time

KEYWORDS:

• Kruger Park
• South African leisure activities
• safari
• postmaterialism and environmentalism
• African labour in conservation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).