Noordhoek eco-estates protect the rich from the reality of Masiphumelele: Apartheid geography preserved behind a concern for the environment

In this piece we do a first analysis of the making of an "eco-estate" in Cape Town and its social and ecological effects. These "eco-estates" enrol and depoliticises environmental arguments to create a "green" life-style choice for the rich. Often placed on pristine land outside the urban edge, these “eco-estates” represent a deeply problematic and pervasive urban development in South African cities. Not only do they exploit “green” arguments, consumes a lot of space—but they also form part of a "geographical escapism" that re-produces spatial apartheid (Ballard and Jones 2011) and what SA historian Premesh Lalu (2009) has called a "settler public sphere," a public discourse that makes invisible ongoing violence and the wider reality of a country and neighbourhood of deep and racialized inequality.