Natural Neighbors: Indigenous Landscapes and Eco-Estates in Durban, South Africa

Abstract

In South Africa, new gated communities have begun branding themselves as “eco-estates,” “game estates,” “nature estates,” and “forest estates.” The marketing and consumption of nature has become prominent in the production and consumption of gated communities. A particular emphasis is placed on the use of native or indigenous plant species in landscape design. Suburbanites seeking to escape the increasingly mixed and threatening postapartheid city are offered a chance to reconnect with nature in eco-estates. Where largely white elites often feel a precarious hold in the new South Africa, natural heritage offers attachment to place. These natural landscapes are highly selective engagements with the local. Nature-oriented gated communities offer spaces that exclude problematic plants and people alike. Yet, while attempting to capitalize on this new gardening trend, developers have risked alienating conventional gardeners of exotic horticultural plants. The result is a strategic accommodation of different material expressions of landscape.

Nuevos conjunto cerrados de África del Sur empiezan a autoproclamarse como “eco-haciendas,” “fundos de naturaleza” y “propiedades forestales.” El mercadeo y consumo de naturaleza se ha hecho prominente en la construcción y consumo de estas comunidades cerradas. En el diseño del paisaje se pone especial énfasis en el uso de especies de plantas nativas o indígenas. A los suburbanitas que buscan escapar de la ciudad posapartheid, crecientemente mezclada y amenazante, se les ofrece una oportunidad de reencontrarse con la naturaleza en las eco-haciendas. En un caso como este, donde las élites predominantemente blancas sienten a menudo lo precario de su asidero en la nueva Sudáfrica, la heredad natural ofrece apego de lugar. Estos paisajes naturales son compromisos altamente selectivos con lo local. Los conjuntos cerrados de orientación hacia la naturaleza ofrecen espacios que excluyen a la vez plantas y gente problemáticas. Con todo, mientras intentan capitalizar en esta nueva tendencia jardineril, los desarrolladores se han arriesgado a aalienar los jardineros convencionales de plantas horticulturales exóticas. El resultado es una acomodación estratégica de diferentes expresiones materiales del paisaje.

Keywords:

• elites
• gated communities
• landscapes
• nature
• South Africa

关键词:

• 精英
• 封闭式社区
• 景观
• 自然
• 南非

Palabras clave:

• élites
• conjuntos cerrados
• paisajes
• naturaleza
• Sudáfrica

Acknowledgments

Versions of this article were presented at the meeting of the Association of American Geographers, 15–19 April 2008, Boston, and at the History and African Seminar Series at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on 6 August 2008. We thank the organizers of those sessions and participants for their comments. In addition, we thank Max Andrucki, Matt Durington, Michael Mason, Sophie Chevalier, and the reviewers for their insights on earlier versions.

Notes

1. Antagonism between urbanism and wildlife is well documented historically and periodically resurfaces with concerns for sightings of mountain lion, in West Coast U.S. cities, measures to control alligators in Florida, crows in Japanese cities, and pigeons, foxes, rats, and squirrels just about everywhere (see Davis 1999; Baron 2004). As often, the presence of indigenous wildlife might go unnoticed by most. In a Nevada suburban community, Guterson (1992) recounted how a nine-year-old informant rejoiced in the presence of lizards, rattlers, chipmunks, lions, black widow spiders, and scorpions in the most bland urban environment possible.

2. Indigenous plants were present in many gardens as they contributed well to the production of a landscaped horticultural garden. Individual species of indigenous plants such as agapanthas, zantedeshia (arum lily), gladoli, geraniums, gerberas, and strelitzia (bird of paradise flower) were recognized as gardening plants the world over. Other plants such as cycads, clivias, and orchids were also prized and sometimes taken from the wild. Others still might simply have been “planted” there by birds or other nonhuman means and become incorporated into the garden. Distinctively local trees such as Acacias and Albizia and plants such as aloes certainly featured in many gardens alongside imports, signifying a rather complex combination of international and local references in gardening. However, only a fraction of local species entered the gardening pallet and most would have been weeded out.

3. Phezulu Estate has leased 300 of its 630 hectares from a tribal authority to secure a large area of undeveloped land as a nature reserve (Interview, Phezulu staff, 2006). This entailed a process of moving a Zulu family out of the reserve and providing them with a new house and access to water and electricity, which they did not have before. The surrounding Zulu community will have access to the land.

4. Although there is little doubt that some developments have made substantial investment in environmental best practice, many have also sought to evade such investment. There is resistance in others to excessively close regulation by the state (Koblitz 2006) and in one spectacular case the bribery of a provincial premier to overlook environmental concerns (Nevill 2004).

5. A civil society group called “guardians of the garden route” has organized in the southern Cape to oppose rapid enclosure of land and monopolization of water resources by elite groups in new developments (“It's time to stop the developers … ” 2005).

6. There have been various panics, including a particularly effective April Fool's joke, that conservationists are going to succeed in removing all jacarandas, whose blue flowers define the spring landscapes of towns such as Pretoria and Pietermaritzburg. In fact, the official policy is to remove those that have escaped from controlled settings into the wild (Montgomery 2001; “Pretoria's jacarandas won't get the axe” 2001).