Safaris into Subjectivity: White Locals, Black Tourists, and the Politics of Belonging in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Abstract

The elite safari lodges in Botswana's Okavango Delta provide an intriguing site through which to explore processes of identity construction, as people from vastly different backgrounds meet and explore ontological possibilities through and against each other. Drawing on a dinner table dispute between an African American tourist and his white Motswana guide, I explore contested notions of what constitutes African identities. The encounter shows that colonial histories and the racialization of space continue to be central to African identity politics, and I describe how white citizens' claims to belonging are challenged on these grounds. In response to such challenges, white Batswana assert a strongly nationalistic identity, distancing themselves from other southern African white populations and their colonial histories. They staunchly defend their claims to belonging through mobilising a partial view of Botswana's history and contemporary sociopolitical conditions, which has made possible a deep sense of emplacement within the social and natural environments of the Okavango.

The 2017 Shooting of Kuki Gallmann and the Politics of Conservation in Northern Kenya

“…In the wake of Gallmann’s shooting, global media sources referred to her unequivocally as a “conservationist,” without regard for the fact that land conflict in Laikipia is rooted in the very instability of the figure of the white African landowner as a conservationist. Today, throughout Africa, nature conservation and safari tourism remain sectors in which citizens of European descent hold a drastic edge over African competitors (Hughes 2010; Hall 2011; Gressier 2011). Since the colonial period, wildlife conservation has been an occupation (both professional and personal) for many of Kenya’s most recognizable white figures.…”