Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the contemporary interactions between people and elephants in Mapungubwe National Park, in Limpopo province, South Africa. The paper seeks to create an understanding of how these human-animal interactions shape people’s relationship with the place.

Paper long abstract:

Although Mapungubwe National Park is a protected area in terms of South Africa’s National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act (57 of 2003), it is also a World Heritage Site and was the first of South Africa’s national parks to be inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Mapungubwe was listed as a site of significance for the “important interchange of human values” which produced important changes in southern Africa from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries AD (UNESCO, 2019). Despite the fact that people moved in and out of the area at different times, there has been a continuous human presence in the area, and to this day, it is surrounded by farms, communal lands, and other protected areas. Using ethnographic material, this paper examines the interactions between visitors and people who live and work in the Mapungubwe region and the elephant population whose numbers have increased significantly since the establishment of the national park. The paper seeks to create an understanding of what it means for people who currently interact with this area to share this environment with elephants and how these human-animal interactions shape people’s experiences of, and relationship with the place. Additionally, I discuss the elephant management strategies that conservation managers employ in protected areas and how these strategies have led to the influences that elephants have in shaping protected areas and the lives of the people who live in and around protected areas.