Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park wins the American Historical Society’s Martin A Klein Award
More about the book!

Another award for Jacob Dlamini’s Safari Nation!

Following on from the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing in English, this award is the The Martin A Klein Prize in African History, awarded by the American Historical Society. The award recognises the most distinguished work of scholarship on African history published in English during the previous calendar year.

‘Now I want to suggest that in the colonial situation presence was the critical question, the crucial word. Its denial was the keynote of colonialist ideology. Question: Were there people there? Answer: Well … not really, you know … people of sorts perhaps, but not as you and I understand the word.’ – Chinua Achebe, 1992

Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park opens new lines of inquiry into the study of national parks in Africa. The Kruger National Park is South Africa’s most iconic nature reserve. Dlamini delves into another side to the park: a social history neglected by scholars and popular writers alike in which black people occupy centre stage.

Relying on oral histories, photographs and archival research, Safari Nation engages both with African historiography and with ongoing debates about the land question, democracy and citizenship in South Africa.

Jacob Dlamini is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton.