• The Hunt for Big Game: Gender and Labour Relations in the Safaris of Africa

The image of a white male hunter with his recently captured game has become symbolic of the emergence and popularity of big-game hunting in the safaris of Africa, particularly in the east of the continent. In this essay, I begin by contextualising its rise during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, when major European powers made incursions into and colonised large swarths of Africa. I proceed to argue that while imperialism and colonialism have often been conceived through imaginaries of exploration and conquest which are overtly masculine, this historicity is subverted and exposed as inadequate when the participation of women, both European and African, is seen to feature prominently in the safari space. European women partook in big-game hunting just like their male counterparts did, though an uneven power dynamic persisted between them by virtue of a patriarchal social system, resulting in the suppression of feminist historiographies within this field of study, until recently. Meanwhile, local expertise of geographies and fauna were required for Europeans to achieve a successful hunt, enabling indigenous African women and men to re-possess agency and exercise control over methods used and the expedition’s eventual outcome. It is important, however, not to overstate the extent to which indigenous communities were able to exert influence over European bodies, as the overarching system of colonial administration continued to ensure the subjugation and oppression of African people. This short essay is informed by Michel Foucault’s ‘docile bodies’ and Homi Bhabha’s ‘third space’, and engages extensively with the narratives which white male hunters published after returning from their safari expeditions as primary sources. While not strictly reliable historical sources of information due to their sensationalism, these narratives draw on the author’s lived experiences and are consequently useful repositories of information which have often been overlooked by scholars. I read these comparatively with secondary research to substantiate the main arguments put forward in my essay.