Over the past few decades there has been a concerted effort in southern Africa for community based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs. The general premise behind CBNRM allows local communities to be empowered to utilize their surrounding natural resources to facilitate socio-economic growth. This is seen as an effective rural development tool which often takes on the form of eco-tourism in South Africa. It creates a link between nature conservation and socio-economic development needs and is normally built on existing conservation areas such as national parks (Ezeuduji et al. 2017: 225).“Protected area outreach” is a form of CBNRM (Chevallier 2016: 6), and this degree project examines how stakeholder participation was incorporated into the formulation of Kruger National Park’s (KNP) ten-year management plan. Using KNP’s stakeholder engagement process as a naturalistic case study, the aim is to discover the extent of participation and whether true empowerment is facilitated. This was done via document analysis of the 2018 KNP Stakeholder Participation Report using the emancipatory approach. This approach is influenced by critical, post-colonial and intersectional theory and emphasizes the attainment of social justice through the unveiling and dismantling of invisible oppressive power structures (Wesp et al. 2018: 319). The analysis shows that KNP uses a systems approach to their stakeholder engagement as opposed to an empowerment one; that participation is limited to consultation and is therefore merely a form of tokenism; that weaker marginalized stakeholder groups suffer from systemic exclusion and underrepresentation; and that there is little to no attention given to empowerment nor structural reform to drive social change.