This talk examines the many ways in which communities have mobilized the Kruger National Park as both backdrop and political instrument in their struggles over resources and representation in the South African lowveld. Drawing on the work of Nancy Jacobs and Jane Carruthers, it re-orientates discussion of the Park (and park policy more generally) away from sterile debates about whether or not blacks are visiting these places and whether they are doing so in sufficient numbers. In essence, it argues that the development of a deeper and richer understanding of the relationship between black South Africans and the Kruger Park must begin outside the park or, as Carruthers puts it in her history of Kruger Park, “beyond the fence.” The people of the lowveld do not need to venture into the Park in order to make it work for them. They only have to protest outside its gates, as they have been doing for more than half a century, to make the Park perform for their benefit.

Jacob Dlamini is a historian of Africa, with an interest in precolonial, colonial and postcolonial African History. He obtained a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2012 and is also a graduate of Wits University in South Africa and Sussex University in England. Jacob held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Barcelona, Spain, from November 2011 to April 2015, and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University from August 2014 to May 2015. A qualified field guide, Jacob is also interested in comparative and global histories of conservation and national parks.