SAFARI NATION, a social history of the Kruger National Park

330pp., b/w & colour illus., maps, paperback, First South African Edition, Johannesburg, 2020

First Published in the USA in 2020.

Discusses the complex ways black South Africans from different backgrounds related to the Kruger National Park over the course of the twentieth century, and engages with ongoing debates about the “land question,” democracy, and citizenship in South Africa.

“In Safari Nation, the Kruger Park and South African ideas of nature and nationality are revealed in profoundly new and insightful ways. Jacob Dlamini captures South African experiences of nature and leisure that have largely escaped the historical profession, focusing his sharp eye on the significant minority of black South Africans who managed to live ’with - as opposed to under - colonialism and apartheid.’ An enjoyable book, full of surprises.” Saul Dubow, author of South Africa's Struggle for Human Rights

“Safari Nation is a highly original treatment of the history of Kruger National Park from a black perspective. Dlamini does not pursue a polarized interpretation of the park and conservation as simply white/colonial constructs but instead develops a growing literature that presents African people as engaged in many different facets of park history, as agents, and conservationists.” William Beinart, author of The Rise of Conservation in South Africa

Jacob Dlamini is Assistant Professor of history at Princeton University and is a qualified field guide. He is the author of  Askari: a story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-apartheid struggle, The Terrorist Album: apartheid's insurgents, collaborators and the security police and Native Nostalgia.