“…Sometimes a glimpse of this comes out in the ranger diaries one can buy in the park, but these are of the romantic and heroic kind. The dominant side of the equation, where labour is poorly paid, highly insecure and subject to intimidation, racism and other forms of abuse, is rarely highlighted or noted, save for in some research reports, academic works and internal memos (Meskell, 2012; Reid-Hresko, 2018; Thakholi, 2021). What makes this situation worse, we argue, is that the highly unequal and often abusive social relations that characterize conservation in South Africa are deeply fossilized: stuck in rigid structures highly resistant to change.…”