On a late afternoon in November 2019, estate agent Amelia,Footnote 1 property photographer Lauren and I arrived at a villa in a gated estate in Bryanston, one of the affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg. As Amelia pushed open the large wooden pivot door, she jokingly added in a low voice, ‘This house has cameras everywhere, so big smiles’. The owners were not home. Thandi, a live-in domestic worker in a pink and white uniform, possibly in her thirties, let us in through the two sets of electric steel gates that lead to this Mediterranean-style villa situated on a 3,000 square metre property. A chandelier was hanging in the double-volume entrance hall, and below it was an opulent bouquet of fresh flowers on a table. The sweet smell from the large, lit peony and blush suede-scented Jo Malone candle filled the air of the entrance hall. ‘It even smells expensive here,’ whispered Lauren to me, before turning to Amelia to discuss the photoshoot for this new listing. The two white women, also in their mid-thirties, moved effortlessly through the five-bedroom house while calling Thandi intermittently to help switch on lights and open blinds, so Lauren could ‘capture the lifestyle’ in the photos.
Photographs were staged to display how bedrooms were connected to their walk-in closets and ensuite bathrooms. The numerous lounge and dining zones with wooden folding doors faced the verdant landscaped garden with a fountain and pool pavilion. From all angles, the vista displayed nothing but greenery, expansive views, and a blue sky. The enclosed high-walled property, which was later advertised as a ‘pristine home’ offering ‘privacy and tranquillity’, appeared detached from any spaces of Johannesburg. Although the two sets of electric gates and private borehole drew attention to much-debated news topics – namely, recurring water shortages, planned power cuts and the fear of crime – the house seemed removed from such widely shared middle-class anxieties.
While preparing for the twilight photographs of the exterior, Thandi looked at Amelia and asked hesitantly whether she would be losing her job. Caught off guard, Amelia answered vaguely, and, trying to comfort her, told her that it would take a long time for them to sell the property. While waiting for ‘the right light’ in the garden, Amelia whispered how awkward and sad it was that the domestic worker did not know. Lauren concurred, expressing how they were often caught in similar situations. As planned, the twilight image – detached from the labour and tense encounters that went into its production – became the cover image of the listing. Yellow light flushed out through every window and made the villa appear warm and glowing, which contrasted with the surrounding manicured greenery that was embraced in dusk light and a purply blue sky. In this buyers’ market, the property was listed at 18 million rand (approximately US$1.25 millionFootnote 2 ) and was promoted as being ‘designed for the family that loves to entertain’. Hidden from the frame of the image were the numerous security cameras, high walls and double sets of electric gates, as well as the precarious labour that is needed to uphold the luxury lifestyle that was being sold.
As promoters of future living, estate agentsFootnote 3 such as Amelia provide a rarely investigated entry point for exploring how luxuryFootnote 4 suburban lifestyles are cultivated and imagined for potential buyers in suburban Johannesburg. While specific physical structures were meticulously curated to shine during the photoshoot, other structures and social relations that did not present the same seamless image were hidden. What is for sale is ‘not just a house, but a lifestyle’, as many advertisements proclaimed. Manipulating light and frames to present polished and desirable spaces that provide a seeming tabula rasa for new owners to imagine their own intimate lives and aspirations is arguably a general characteristic of property advertising (Botterill Reference Botterill, MacAllister and West2013). What I argue in this article is that estate agents perpetuate the affluent enclaved lifestyles of historically racially segregated suburbs through visions of desirable and multi-racial suburbs without grappling with the hard realities and inequalities of post-apartheid South Africa.
I call this advertising strategy a promotion of ‘detached intimacy’ – an aspirational state of urban dwelling that simultaneously seeks connection to the people and infrastructure of the city while distancing itself from its highly racialized and unequal property market. In detached intimacy, intimacy is characterized by highlighting harmony with local nature, shared off-grid solutions and enclaved lifestyle communities, which is commonly referred to as ‘live, work, play’. As a feature of post-apartheid real estate as well as global real estate trends, ‘live, work, play’ refers to communities that live near their workplaces and engage in most leisure and social activities within one enclaved area. Detachment is characterized as a distance not only from inequality and crime but also from other emerging middle-class anxieties of recent years, related to routine water shortages and electricity blackouts, which are locally referred to as loadshedding. In suburbs that historically have embodied privilege and exclusion, estate agents such as Amelia endeavour to repackage properties as attractive for existing wealthy buyers as well as those who aspire to wealth.
In some respects, the cultivation of detached intimacy began much longer ago with the establishment of the northern suburbs in the beginning of the twentieth century. After the discovery of gold in 1886, suburbs were developed exclusively for whiteFootnote 5 high-income and middle-class residents (Beavon Reference Beavon2004: 88). With large stands and spacious English-named streets, the neighbourhoods provided residents with a quality life away from the gold mines, mine dumps and their workers (Mabin Reference Mabin, Harrison, Gotz, Todes and Wray2014: 396). This socio-spatial structuring was implemented by the British colonialists’ desire for a social order based on hierarchies of race that began in the first half of the twentieth century and intensified during the apartheid regime, which violently reconfigured South Africa from 1948 until formally abolished in 1994 (Murray Reference Murray2011).
These ‘leafy suburbs’, as they are colloquially called due to the abundance of greenery, have now undergone a ‘performance of nominal democratization’ (Falkof and van Staden Reference Falkof, van Staden, Falkof and van Staden2020: 10) as Black, Coloured and Indian residents also call the suburbs their home, in addition to people from around the continent and the rest of the world (see Masango and Mkhwanazi Reference Masango and Mkhwanazi2026). The suburbs cover an area of hundreds of square kilometres, with possibly a million residents (Mabin Reference Mabin, Harrison, Gotz, Todes and Wray2014: 395), and are still home to financial, cultural and academic elites.
The area encompasses economic and social hubs, high-rise buildings and freestanding houses on hilltops and flatlands, where both apartments listed at R2 million (US$138,500) and villas listed at R18 million are promoted as ‘luxury living’. It also boasts an intense architectural diversity that is influenced by various styles and periods, such as the Arts and Crafts style, Art Deco, Mediterranean and Georgian, as well as luxury imitations of the straw-thatched cylindrical huts of the Sotho-Tswana people who first dwelled on the Witwatersrand (Czeglédy Reference Czeglédy, Tomlinson, Beauregard, Bremmer and Mangcu2003: 32–3). The abundance of greenery in these areas is labelled by some scholars as the ‘green divide’ legacy of apartheid (van Staden and Stoffberg Reference van Staden and Stoffberg2021). The green divide is a reference to the intentional planting of imported trees and greenery in wealthy areas and the lack of such planting in areas close to the mines and in townships. Today, the (still) English names of suburbs and their broad aesthetic profile and leafiness do not indicate detachment from mining, but rather a collective detachment from other undesirable features, such as traffic noise, heavy industry, litter, air pollution, informal settlements and townships – thus indicating detached intimacy as a preferred state of urban dwelling.
Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted in Johannesburg between 2019 and 2022, following estate agents and property photographers operating in the luxury segment of the residential property market, this article explores how they manoeuvre a racialized and unequal property market to sell what they refer to as luxury properties. Building on AbdouMaliq Simone’s work on the multi-directionality of urban life (Reference Simone, Bystrom, Harris and Webber2018), I see detachment not as a ‘deconstructive manoeuvre’ whereby, in this case, advertisements can ‘cut themselves off from the prevailing conditions of a larger world or set of circumstances’ (ibid.: 36), even if this appears to be the case on the surface. Instead, detachment is necessary to create potential for new and generative relations. The contradictory manoeuvres of detachment and intimacy are not inherently destructive but rather are important in the ‘making and regulating of urban spaces’ (ibid.: 36). In this case, I argue that to grapple with the suburbs as sites both of luxury and of deteriorating infrastructures and social inequalities in this commission-based industry, estate agents cultivate a sense of detached intimacy to reassert the suburbs as attractive. This includes reinforcing an imagery of harmonious private spaces that are detached from dangerous and deteriorating public spaces. While real estate advertising feeds into and reproduces a conventional understanding of the domestic sphere as a private, family-oriented home (Healy-Clancy and Hickel Reference Healy-Clancy, Hickel, Healy-Clancy and Hickel2014) associated with intimacy, safety and harmony, recurring tensions and conflicting interests, such as the interaction between Thandi and Amelia, also highlight how intimacy can be troublesome, ambiguous, unstable, tense and deceitful (Broch-Due and Ystanes Reference Broch-Due, Ystanes, Broch-Due and Ystanes2016).
To comprehend the coexistence of contradictory characteristics, I address the styling of the property for sale as an urban enclave. An urban enclave is a manifestation of privilege and power that is shaped by historical racial segregation policies. Although the term follows Hannah Appel’s definition of enclaving processes as ‘the unequal distribution of urban infrastructure’ (Reference Appel2012: 441), urban enclaving is also an ‘aesthetics of imagination’ (Nielsen et al. Reference Nielsen, Sumich and Bertelsen2021). Nielsen et al. describe how, in relation to the built environment, social actors cultivate urban imaginaries that also move through the city and connect different practices and aspirations of what the city is and can be. These mobile socio-cultural orientations attached to people and commodities can be aspirational for some and dystopic for others (ibid.: 884, 890). In Johannesburg, these contradictions allude to the continuation of past structural inequalities and the promise of a safe, secure and integrated future city.
Amelia’s comment on the security cameras and the two sets of electric gates at the Bryanston property exemplifies the general emphasis from estate agents and residents about security being a key issue that determines how and where people live. Securitization and fear of crime are often highlighted as an inherent aspect of the northern suburbs, and of the city in general (see, for example, Bremner Reference Bremner, Judin and Vladislavić1998; Beall et al. Reference Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell2002; Murray Reference Murray2011; Landman and Badenhorst Reference Landman, Badenhorst, Harrison, Gotz, Todes and Wray2014). Selzer and Heller (Reference Selzer, Heller and Go2010: 196) define this as double middle-class enclavization, as the northern suburbs are not only disconnected from other parts of the city but also internally further sectioned into high-walled enclaves. Selzer and Heller also indicate how other assets preserve the exclusive status of the suburbs, such as access to good schools, luxury malls, green parks and other leisure activities (ibid.: 197). I explore how estate agents use these qualities and characteristics to cultivate detached intimacy as desirable for urban dwelling.
This article examines three facets of detached intimacy. First, I situate how property ownership and the real estate sector represent a history of detached intimacy that continues to be intertwined with race and class. Second, drawing from ethnographic examples, I analyse how estate agents use text, images and digital technologies to reinforce detached intimacy as a state of desirable urban dwelling and a promise of further enclavization. Third, I illustrate how estate agents both contest and maintain detached intimacy. In particular, I focus on how their everyday practices of staging detach the luxurious lifestyles for sale from societal inequalities and the atrocities of the apartheid past (specifically in the form of staff accommodation and physical structures embedded in imperial remains) and yet connect the same structures as inherent aspects of desirable suburban lifestyles. In real estate advertising, these three facets of detached intimacy hark back to past spatial imaginaries, while signalling new aspirational futures for urban dwelling.
Detached intimacy: a brief history in Johannesburg’s suburbs
To examine estate agents’ strategies, it is necessary to understand the racially skewed and unequal property ownership situation that characterizes South Africa (Zenker et al. Reference Zenker, Walker and Boggenpoel2024). Of a population of approximately 62 million (Statistics South Africa 2023), the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture estimates that 60 per cent of South Africans are without recorded land rights, with only a minority of Black South Africans having acquired secure tenure (PAPLRA 2019: 12). Urban areas make up only 3 per cent of the total land mass of South Africa, and although Blacks, Coloureds and Indians now account for the majority of landowners, the white minority owns 49 per cent of urban land (DRDLR 2017: 12–13). The British colonists’ specific construction of private property legitimized the creation of racial classification systems and excluded other ways of belonging to the land in South Africa, as well as in other former British colonies. The way in which property law and racial subjectivity are each irreducible to the other (Bhandar Reference Bhandar2018) indicates how ideas about detached intimacy began prior to the post-apartheid period.
Property and the home were core tenets of the colonial project and the apartheid state (Healy-Clancy and Hickel Reference Healy-Clancy, Hickel, Healy-Clancy and Hickel2014; Van der Walt Reference Van der Walt2009). With the 1950 Group Areas Act, those categorized as Black, Indian or Coloured were forcibly and violently moved to inadequate housing in racially categorized areas with intense surveillance, while whites continued to settle in high-quality houses in well-managed areas (Beavon Reference Beavon2004: 95–110; Heer Reference Heer, Kroeker, O’Kane and Scharrer2018). In urban areas, influx control policies aimed to protect the white minority, both the wealthy and the less privileged, and to control the increase of Black South Africans who sought opportunities in urban centres and were forced to migrate to cities to work for the white elites (Beavon Reference Beavon2004). The physical segregation between racial groups and the high-quality development of white areas was a process of detached intimacy as it facilitated opportunities for the wealthy to cultivate desirable attachments to properties and neighbourhoods and simultaneously suppress other claims to land.
From the 1950s onwards, areas defined as white zones experienced booming property and infrastructure developments, and the implementation of multiple instances of apartheid legislation increased homeownership for the white minority (Butcher Reference Butcher2016: 53–4; Beavon Reference Beavon2004). This property boom also increased the role of real estate agencies. Many of the currently dominant agencies in South Africa were established between the 1960s and 1980s.Footnote 6 These companies continue to be family-owned businesses and promote themselves as such, which by default means that they are still white-owned. Amelia is still representative of the sector, as 77 per cent of the approximately 40,000 estate agents nationwide are white and 58 per cent are female (PSCC 2019). Vuyo, who is a Black estate agent in his mid-twenties working in an upmarket white-owned agency, explained to me during an interview how he adjusts his performances to be accepted in an industry with skewed demographics:
The thing is, you must be very accommodating to white people. It’s all about how you speak, how you carry yourself. You must be eloquent. You must be well spoken for a Black person to make everybody around you feel comfortable. Otherwise, you are just unhappy … I can’t put the radio on to obviously Black music, can’t walk into a show day and have me listen to house music. I play that [classical music] to be as neutral as possible … Black people are often surprised when they walk into a property and see me at a viewing … It is hard to be in my position. The fact is, for a Black person in real estate, you must be accommodating to both sides. I am too Black for white people and too white for Black people.
According to Vuyo, speaking eloquently is in line with internal industry expectations, and if you do not adjust you will not be able to do your job well. Defining classical music as ‘neutral’ and as different to ‘Black music’ exemplifies how Vuyo positions himself within the industry and puts on racialized performances to sell properties. At the same time, Vuyo’s reflection of meeting Black buyers indicates how new buyers also challenge these established expectations. The variation in buyers’ expectations became evident in a conversation between Vuyo and Bongani, another young Black estate agent at the same agency, where they are a clear minority.
Bongani asked Vuyo if his client liked the property that Vuyo was supposed to have shown him. Vuyo told Bongani that he had sent Amelia in his stead. Bongani’s facial expression was a look of both surprise and disappointment: ‘You don’t send a white lady for the Black buyer. My man! If he cannot support another brother, he will not buy it. That’s why you had to go.’ Bongani looked at me and explained that ‘millennialsFootnote 7 will not buy from a white person … The buyer might like the house, but because the agent is white, they will choose not to buy it.’ Although Vuyo had misunderstood the task at hand, their interaction shows how this commission-driven industry is more than just property transactions. Bongani and his client’s approach to property as a transformational and political project exemplifies how the historical positioning of property continues to orient intimate links between people and property, where the desire for private property continues. In contemporary South Africa, property ownership (and the size of the property) represents upward social mobility, economic stability and political inclusion (Heer Reference Heer, Kroeker, O’Kane and Scharrer2018; Southall Reference Southall2016; Lemanski Reference Lemanski2011).
During apartheid, those categorized as Black, Coloured and Indian mainly had access to rental accommodation in urban areas. This shifted in the mid-1980s as the state adopted neoliberal policies, influenced by Thatcherism and the World Bank, alongside rental households’ resistance to apartheid through rent boycotts (Marais and Cloete Reference Marais and Cloete2017: 22–3). The first property sector reforms began in the late 1970s, as the apartheid state shifted its legitimation for the regime away from ideological principles to stabilize the economy and political system (Posel Reference Posel, Marks and Trapido1987). Although racial exclusion declined from the late 1970s, suburbanites’ anxiety regarding previously excluded groups remained strong. Although a growing number of white suburbanites in principle welcomed new homeowners in the transition to democratic rule in the 1990s, they also expected the property market to act as a barrier for upward social mobility (Ballard Reference Ballard2010: 1073). They reframed their expectations of the new residents to conform with established suburban values. Richard Ballard illustrates this tension through the emergence of a polarized debate over ritual cattle slaughter in previously white areas in Durban in the 1990s and 2000s, where new practices clashed with established suburban values (Ballard Reference Ballard2010). Such tensions reveal how access to property ownership maintained a logic of detached intimacy when transitioning from a racialized logic to a classed logic, in order to mediate inclusion while still reinforcing hierarchies.
In contemporary real estate advertising, a similar class logic of detached intimacy is reasserted through the estate agents’ own conspicuous and bodily performances. Following my interlocutors included dining in restaurants, sipping mimosas, or drinking freshly brewed coffees while planning a weekend hike or talking about their children in university while dressed in corporate attire – with men in dark suits and women in pencil skirts or dresses with elegant pumps. Although Amelia lived in the suburbs, she told me that she never took clients to her own home because it did not match the standard of the properties she sells. All of the estate agents that I met lived in the same or similar suburbs to those that they marketed, yet Amelia’s concealment underscores how professionalism and aspirational suburban standards extend beyond workplace aesthetics to also include domestic spaces. To sell luxury properties, estate agents must embody and promote suburban lifestyles, fostering trust through cultural and social similarity. Marketing campaigns further amplify these expectations. A billboard advertisement from the agency Pam Golding Properties – captioned ‘We, The Parks’, positioned between a main road and a golf course, and featuring two corporately dressed white male estate agents – claimed not only to represent but also to embody the area (see Figure 1). These practices illustrate how estate agents’ social and material performances contribute to sustaining suburban imaginaries and the classed hierarchy that underpins the property market.
Estate agents do not only operate in specific areas. As this billboard claims, estate agents also become the area.
Photograph by the author, 2019. Names and phone numbers in the photograph have been edited.
Figure 1. Long description
The billboard advertisement is set against a backdrop of trees and parked cars. It features two men in suits standing side by side, with one gesturing with his hand. The text on the billboard reads ‘We The Parks’ in large letters. Below this, there is contact information for Pam Golding Properties, including phone numbers and an address. The overall scene suggests a promotional effort for luxury suburban lifestyles.
Other marketing campaigns included local financial sponsorships, such as sponsoring the salary and equipment of a gardener to take care of a local public park, the installation of a public water fountain and bins, extra security guards on the streets and cash prizes for pavement garden initiatives (Sibanda Reference Sibanda2021). On a national level, Pam Golding Properties sponsored the renovation of the main hall of the Baxter Theatre at the University of Cape Town as part of its corporate social investment programme and marketing campaign (Mkoko Reference Mkoko2022). Such sponsorships show how estate agents are not only market intermediaries and interpreters of economic and cultural capital (Bridge Reference Bridge2001); real estate marketing is also a revenue stream and a stimulating actor aimed at accelerating capital turnover, increasing property values and attracting new clients (Botterill Reference Botterill, MacAllister and West2013). I argue that such financial contributions intensify detached intimacy as they contribute to sustaining the labour-intensive aesthetics of the suburbs and high security standards, and reinforce the cultural capital of the suburbs by supporting the liberal arts. Additionally, such sponsorships further distance neighbourhoods from areas without equivalent investments.
At the same time as the industry is intensely profit-driven, estate agents often toned down the financial aspects of their work and emphasized instead their role in cultivating meaningful relationships when presenting themselves to clients and me. Several estate agents stated that part of their job was to ‘facilitate a love affair’ or ‘matching people with the right property’. In an industry in which estate agents are globally perceived as acting evasively, untrustworthy and driven by profit (Bishop Reference Bishop2004; Besbris Reference Besbris2020; Choplin Reference Choplin2023: 84), this language of desire and seduction (Garber Reference Garber2000) allows estate agents to detach themselves from contested aspects of their work and to emphasize relational elements. I contend that to sell luxury properties, estate agents must create trustworthy relations with clients, and this includes performing in line with the cultural and social capital of the buyers and sellers, and the property itself, which reinforces a sense of detached intimacy. The next section examines how estate agents facilitate such ‘love affairs’ through verbal and visual tropes and digital technologies – a production process that cultivates a promise of further enclavization.
Producing desirable urban dwellings: text, image and digital technologies
I often overheard estate agents asking each other for advice in the office to identify precise adjectives and formulations for property descriptions. When I assisted Amelia in finalizing a thirty-five-word text for an advertisement, which was to be promoted in the weekly edition of Neighbourhood, the Sunday Times’ property and lifestyle magazine,Footnote 8 she told me to keep words including ‘luxury’, ‘perfect location’, ‘immaculate’ and ‘rooftop view’. In this magazine, as elsewhere, real estate advertisements are always in English, often sprinkled with Italian or French terms (e.g. piazza, palazzo, concierge, petite, connoisseur). For new luxury developments, the appliance brand promoted is the Italian Smeg. Such linguistic and brand associations indicate a continuation of Johannesburg’s historical appetite for ‘elsewheres’ in urban luxury developments (Murray Reference Murray2011; Mbembe and Nuttall Reference Mbembe, Nuttall, Nuttall and Mbembe2008). Lindsay Bremner argued that, in the years immediately after apartheid, advertising properties through lifestyles elsewhere, with words such as ‘Victorian’, ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘modern’, was used as a vehicle for ‘denying the violent context of the city and creating the image of a preferred lifestyle; if you can’t emigrate, you can at least dig in, with style’ (Reference Bremner, Judin and Vladislavić1998: 62). Evoking desirability, exclusivity and glamour is a general strategy of luxury advertising (Kapferer and Valette-Florence Reference Kapferer and Valette-Florence2016), yet in Johannesburg these strategies simultaneously conceal underlying inequalities and a history of racial segregation. I contend that this constitutes a strategy of detached intimacy where estate agents can detach the properties from the past while promoting desirable features.
In addition to associations to luxurious elsewheres, technologies and labour that sustain luxury lifestyles are also highlighted as important by estate agents. During the editing of the text for the magazine, Amelia said that it was necessary to keep ‘elevator inverter’, because an inverter means that the elevator will work even when there is a power cut, and loadshedding happens all the time. South Africa’s energy crisis had its longest and most severe period between 2018 and 2024. To prevent the collapse of the system, the state-owned utility Eskom scheduled frequent power cuts (Gwaka Reference Gwaka2025). Frustration regarding loadshedding as well as intermittent dry taps due to the lack of maintenance of water systems (Evans Reference Evans2022) was a recurring topic in neighbourhood WhatsAppFootnote 9 groups and in the news during my fieldwork. For the advertisement, the inverter indicates how being off-grid enables a comfortable lifestyle that is detached from the deteriorating public infrastructures outside the gates. This depicts how advertising both shapes and is shaped by local conditions. To cultivate a sense of detached intimacy, estate agents actively use the co-presence of such undesirable features to promote luxury lifestyles, thus exemplifying the chameleon-like nature of enclaving, where comforts and anxieties often coexist (Nielsen et al. Reference Nielsen, Sumich and Bertelsen2021: 890).
Detachment by privatizing public services becomes more explicit and encompassing for larger developments. The private city development of Steyn City was advertised in 2015 with the slogan ‘enough amenities to declare independence’, with a picture of smiling young professionals basking in the sun (Ballard et al. Reference Ballard, Hamann, Mkhize, Lemon, Donaldson and Visser2021: 49–50). Steyn City brands itself as a luxury lifestyle estate, with a man-made lagoon, a championship golf course, bike trails, art installations, a heliport, private schools, an office park, and its very own city centre. Developing estates and apartment complexes as enclaves that ‘you never have to leave’ was enthusiastically explained to me by a salesperson during a property expo held in 2019. Although few declare independence, advertisements like these refer to a global advertising trend of ‘live, work, play’ that is also used extensively across Africa (see, for example, Ablo and Bertelsen Reference Ablo and Bertelsen2022; Splinter and Van Leynseele Reference Splinter and Van Leynseele2019). In the South African context, this trend indicates proximity to amenities such as good schools, white-collar work, entertainment spaces, nature, and off-grid solutions for water and electricity, which detaches the private enclave from the anxieties related to public governance and fear of crime. This detachment also reasserts the promise of the home as a private, safe and intimate space, and prevents residents from facing the inequalities and poverty that are so visually present in public spaces (Raidoo Reference Raidoo, Falkof and van Staden2020).
The second main trend is the promotion of properties as ‘lock up and go’, highlighting security and fears about crime, and denoting easily managed spaces equipped with shared amenities such as a pool and gym. This indicates lifestyles of ‘live, work, play’ and hypermobility, where residents move frequently for work and leisure, unconcerned with maintenance. At the sales launch of an as yet unbuilt luxury apartment complex in Parktown North, a Black female sales assistant, in her mid-twenties, guided me through floor plans for the apartments, which were priced from R2,499,000 (US$173,000). ‘It is a lock-up-and-go kind of apartment, and security is big here,’ she noted. While I sampled complimentary champagne and compared tile options for the kitchen, she explained that rising living costs makes apartment living attractive due to the low upkeep. In the brochure, computer-generated images (CGIs) depicted a multi-racial group of residents living together harmoniously. They enjoyed the same expansive balcony views and poolside leisure, yet without interaction, reinforcing ideals of privacy and individuality. Luxury cars indicated mobility and the preference for driving across enclaved landscapes. This lifestyle promises detachment from local conditions and limited interactions with neighbours, while simultaneously emphasizing safety and ownership in a localized landscape (see Figure 2). Consuming the unbuilt residential complex through miniature models, stylized brochures and champagne illustrates how detached intimacy operates as an ongoing process – cultivated through marketing aesthetics and aspirational imaginaries rather than fixed realities.
A compilation of new luxury residential developments that promote leisure and private comfort. The use of luxury cars in brochures indicates the social and financial status of the potential buyers, as well as car-oriented suburban lifestyles. Photograph by the author, 2022.
Figure 2. Long description
The image features a collage of various luxury residential developments. One photo shows a person relaxing in a comfortable chair by a large window, with a view of a modern bathroom in the background. Another photo displays a well-appointed bedroom with large windows and elegant decor. A third photo presents a multi-story apartment building with balconies, indicating spacious living areas. Additionally, there is an image of a luxury car, suggesting the affluent lifestyle associated with these developments. The text on the images highlights phrases like ‘Come on home,’ ‘Love the way you live,’ and ‘Suburban comfort meets complex convenience,’ emphasizing the luxurious and convenient living experience offered by these developments.
Efforts to make properties desirable included the strategic use of visual imagery in advertisements. As illustrated by the Bryanston photoshoot, photographs were required to convey a lifestyle rather than a mere structure. To create ‘the right light’ for the photos, Lauren was specific in how to use specific indoor lights to give ambiance to a room, and to employ an extra flash to light up corners and nooks. To convey the lifestyle, Amelia also paid an extra fee for twilight shoots. Twilight images are also commonly used to promote new, not yet constructed developments through CGIs (see Figures 2 and 3). Both Asher Ghertner’s (Reference Ghertner2015) work on world-class city making in Delhi and Claudia Gastrow’s (Reference Gastrow2024) work in Luanda emphasize how codes of aesthetic appearance define the future city, regardless of whether or not that look is legal and adheres to planning regulations. Krista Thompson’s work among African diasporic communities in the Caribbean and the USA shows how objects of desire are created through lens-centred practices and technologies of light, where the shine of a thing constitutes its value over its materiality (Reference Thompson2015: 25). I argue that the intentional manipulation of light in property advertisements – to make properties shine – thus constitutes the value of the property, because if something looks good, it must be good. Cultivating ‘the right light’ contributes to a sense of detached intimacy and reasserts the suburbs as exclusive and attractive.
Twilight aesthetics for a new luxury development in Houghton, advertised at a mall in Johannesburg.
Photograph by the author, 2019.
Figure 3. Long description
The image shows a display booth for Tree Tops Houghton luxury apartments set up in a mall. The booth includes several vertical banners and a table banner, all displaying images of the apartment buildings and interior living spaces. The banners highlight features such as urban living, recreational facilities, and services offered. The text on the banners mentions sales details and contact information. In the background, there are escalators and mall visitors walking by, indicating a busy shopping environment.
Surrounding the Bryanston property with manicured greenery and leafy views was another dominant visual aesthetic choice for advertisements. As Amelia explained: ‘We sell not just the structure, but also the air and greenery.’ This rhetoric appears in descriptions such as ‘a private and secure oasis’ or in names of new developments, such as Tree Tops (see Figure 3). Promoting a fertile spot in a dry landscape contrasts the property with the general dry characteristics of the highveld and aligns with the leafy suburban ideal cultivated through imported trees. CGIs for new developments frequently incorporated purple jacaranda trees – an iconic suburban feature – thereby situating the property within a recognizable local environment. This lushness also indirectly gives associations with fresh air. Although promoting clean air is an explicit strategy for advertising luxury real estate in cities that are heavily characterized by polluted air, such as Delhi in India (Waldman Reference Waldman2021), this is not (yet) the case in Johannesburg. But access to clean air is unequally distributed in all urban centres of South Africa, and is perceived as a commodified resource that only the wealthy can afford (Chance Reference Chance2022: 117), thus further detaching the qualities of the suburbs from the reality of the majority of South Africans.
Historically, nature and gardens were important instruments for colonial and apartheid rulers in cultivating unity and morally good citizens in South Africa across race and class; importantly, they were cultivated based on imaginaries of landscapes from their European homelands (Cane Reference Cane2019; Foster Reference Foster2008). Contemporary luxury advertising re-orients associations to nature towards indigenous landscapes, nature conservation and local farm-style aesthetics to primarily target white elites who are seeking new ways to belong to the land (Raidoo Reference Raidoo, Falkof and van Staden2020; Ballard and Jones Reference Ballard and Jones2011). Promises of greenery also conceal the expensive and labour-intensive practices that maintain this lush greenery, as most properties in the suburbs are maintained by hired gardeners. Yet, I contend, although the abundance of manicured greenery in advertising still evokes past ideals, estate agents also assume a universal desire for greenery that is detached from its historical connotations and unequal labour structures.
Although advertisements provide vivid and relatable images of comfortable enclaved lifestyles, they also detach physical spaces from their daily use. In neighbourhood WhatsApp groups and at homeowner association meetings, residents frequently discussed water shortages and the inconsistency of loadshedding schedules. They also discussed the positive and negative aspects of informal traders selling goods on pavements, the presence of homeless people, and goat noises from neighbouring properties. Such exchanges illustrate how the question of what constitutes suburban lifestyles is neither fixed nor uncontested. The multiple ways in which people already inhabit the leafy suburbs reflect that residents do not necessarily buy into the polished lifestyles that are for sale. In the following section, I elaborate on two of these contested features that are desired by some and disliked by others – specifically, staff accommodation and imperial architectural features – and examine how estate agents use detached intimacy as a strategy to integrate their presence in the suburban environment.
Estate agents’ contestation and cultivation of desirable remnants of the past
During a private viewing of a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment listed at R2.1 million (US$145,300) in one of the low-slung Art Deco-inspired apartment complexes in Killarney, Emily, a white estate agent in her fifties, was quick to respond to the potential buyers – a Black couple in their late thirties, working in media and marketing – when they asked if there was room for a domestic worker. Emily said that the current owners were using the domestic quarters on the rooftop for storage and that Charmaine, the owners’ long-term domestic worker from Soweto, came weekly. She added that she was very reliable. Emily had on several occasions told me with enthusiasm how many homeowners now convert staff accommodation into storage rooms. For Emily, this was a welcome trend, particularly considering the cramped conditions and shared facilities of such spaces. Another feature of the repurposing of the apartment’s structure was that the homeowners had stacked several boxes and a ladder in front of the servants’ door. In older buildings such as this one, built in the 1930s, having one entrance for the domestic worker and one for residents was common.
Staff accommodation is an inherent, but contested, feature in the contemporary suburban landscape. In some respects, the construction of staff accommodation during colonial and apartheid rule was a process of detached intimacy. Developers built staff accommodation on the rooftops of apartment buildings as well as at the back of properties in the suburbs to cater for white residents’ desire for easily accessible and cheap domestic labour (Mabin Reference Mabin, Harrison, Gotz, Todes and Wray2014: 397). This physical and social structuring forced suburban houses and apartments to be one of few contact zones between Black female domestic workers and white property owners (Bremner Reference Bremner2004). Today, if not occupied by a domestic worker, the back rooms in the suburban property landscape are, to a large degree, converted into cottages that are leased out to middle-class renters, tourists or visiting researchers such as myself. In practical terms, the continued reliance on domestic labour meant that Charmaine travelled vast distances to sustain the suburban lifestyles of others. Although physical structures are repurposed in some properties, Amelia also said that staff accommodation is a desirable feature for larger properties (over 1,000 square metres), such as the property in Bryanston, because they require a lot of maintenance. Desired by some and disliked by others, the invisibility of such spaces in advertising indicates their ambiguous presence.
Although not explicitly mentioned by the estate agents, Lauren never took pictures of garages, security stations or staff accommodation. The location of staff accommodation within the structures of the building made it easy to exclude these racialized and gendered physical spaces from the aspirational imagery in advertisements. Potential buyers rarely requested to inspect staff accommodation. They were just interested in knowing whether it existed, similar to how they wanted to know about parking spaces. Although the choice of images illustrates what estate agents considered to best highlight the qualities of the luxury lifestyles for sale, the visual omission of staff accommodation curates an image where domestic labour persists but remains hidden, thereby reorienting spatial and social hierarchies.
A developer of a new apartment complex in Sandton explained how they operate much like a hotel. Their 24/7 concierge can book appointments for a cleaner to be safely let into the apartment while the residents are away, and book a table at their preferred restaurant. Concierge services are arguably added to accommodate for the lack of live-in domestic workers. In addition to operating as a hotel, advertisements also often refer to European or New York styles of living (see Figure 4). Luxury apartment complexes promote perceptions of modern global lifestyles, seemingly detached from local labour conditions. Sustaining privileges of the past by layering them with contemporary conditions not only reasserts Bremner’s (Reference Bremner2004) argument that the house remains a primary site of white middle-class anxieties about race and crime in Johannesburg; it also detaches domestic workers even further from the luxurious lifestyles that they help to sustain. Thus, although estate agents now promote and welcome a racially diverse group of buyers, they also contribute to reproducing a racialized and unequal labour system.
Development under construction close to Rosebank in Johannesburg, promoted as ‘hotel styled living’.
Photograph by the author, 2022.
Figure 4. Long description
The image shows a construction site with a black fence. On the fence, there are large banners displaying interior designs of modern living spaces. The first banner shows a living room with a blue sofa, a coffee table, and a side chair. The second banner shows a dining area with a wooden table and chairs. The third banner shows a bedroom with a large bed and a seating area. The banners also include text promoting ‘hotel styled living’ and a website address.
Some strategies of detachment unfold differently in older properties compared with new developments, as estate agents must grapple with how physical structures are also embedded in imperial remains. During the viewing with Emily, the couple said that they wanted to keep the classical features that she had highlighted, such as the parquet floors, the light flowing through the apartment with its high ceilings and grand windows, and the curved lines of the walls, but they would also want to add a contemporary look. As we inspected the bathroom, Emily told them that the black and white chessboard-patterned tiles on the floor were installed by Italian prisoners of war – something that she always mentioned. For this reason, she encouraged them not to change the tiles. They were intrigued by this information and agreed. ‘Keep the good stuff,’ the husband proclaimed. Whether or not this was true is another matter, as most Italian prisoners of war arrived in South Africa in 1941, five years after the building had been completed. Their labour did contribute to the construction of buildings and roads across the country (Kruger Reference Kruger1996), but most likely not the bathrooms in this building. Emily’s deliberate use of war history to cultivate a desirable feature revives the ‘good stuff’ and separates it from the ‘bad’ colonial heritage by situating South Africa in a geopolitical landscape that was on the ‘good’ side of World War Two. What was not mentioned was how, in the same period, violent social engineering through township planning intensified for the growing Black urban population, as their labour was needed by the white elites (Hickel Reference Hickel, Healy-Clancy and Hickel2014).
Imperial remains were constructed and repurposed through advertising strategies to provide the property with a positive temporal depth (Stoler Reference Stoler2008: 201). Arguably, Emily’s strategy of cultivating temporal depth and desire for an ‘authentic past’ that never existed (Silverstein Reference Silverstein, Goodman and Silverstein2009) provided potential buyers with an intimate and presumably timeless encounter with the property, with the aim of making it more desirable. This layering of specific colonial structures and material debris was also visible in advertisements through verbal tropes, such as ‘awe-inspiring character of a bygone era’, ‘colonial-style’ or ‘plantation’. The description of the Bryanston property as a ‘pristine home’ alludes to a home with original purity, uncorrupted by history and previous owners. This layering exemplifies how ‘ruination weaves its way back through racialized hierarchies and the concerted aphasias on which privileges depend’ (Stoler Reference Stoler2008: 209). These verbal tropes are also indicative of the centrality of domestic structures as an anchor for authenticity (Silverstein Reference Silverstein, Goodman and Silverstein2009) to cultivate timeless properties. Such strategies are also reinforced in real estate advertising in other spaces with a legacy of colonial urban planning, such as in India (Waldman et al. Reference Waldman, Silk and Andrews2017).
Although estate agents frame advertisements in particular ways, this does not mean that buyers always buy into these imaginaries. When Emily proclaimed that the hallway was ‘the last piece of luxury because it has no immediate function’ and suggested putting up some artwork, the couple stated that they would rather convert it into a kitchen. Emily also expressed frustration with new owners in Killarney because they were likely to replace the parquet floors with tiles. She told me such an act was like ‘ripping out the soul of the place’. At the same time, redecorating with new tiles can also be understood as a continuation of Johannesburg’s history of appetite for trends from around the world (Mbembe and Nuttall Reference Mbembe, Nuttall, Nuttall and Mbembe2008). Thus, both desiring the original materials of the building and shifting from style to style rather exemplifies the multi-directionality of Johannesburg’s suburban landscape. But despite contestations over property structures, polished advertisements still move across urban spaces as an ‘aesthetics of imagination’ (Nielsen et al. Reference Nielsen, Sumich and Bertelsen2021), promising suburban values of ‘privacy and tranquillity’ that are detached from the intimate relations from which they are made and the reality that they supposedly represent.
Conclusion: the ubiquity and impossibility of detached intimacy
This article has explored how estate agents in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg both cultivate and contest layers of detachment and intimacy to sell luxury properties. The advertising strategy of detached intimacy both reflects the current unequal suburban landscape and its infrastructural conditions and contributes to sustaining it. Although I have focused on contemporary luxury advertising, I have also highlighted how detached intimacy is not a recent phenomenon but preceded the end of apartheid. The establishment of the suburbs and the aspirational state of urban dwelling was built on racialized ideas about private property and belonging. Considering that similar socio-spatial structuring is characteristic of other affluent neighbourhoods in South Africa, as well as urban spaces in other former British colonies on the African continent, from Harare to Dar es Salaam (Ginsburg Reference Ginsburg2011; Mercer Reference Mercer2024; Morreira Reference Morreira2015) and beyond (Waldman et al. Reference Waldman, Silk and Andrews2017), detached intimacy is a phenomenon that is relevant beyond South African borders.
I have explained how the use of text, images and digital technologies detaches properties from current undesirable features, such as deteriorating infrastructures and anxieties about crime and poverty, and thus reinforce enclaved community lifestyles. Cultivating specific attachments with a variety of physical structures and qualities, such as abundance of greenery, fresh air, light and particular architectural designs, while other, more contested features, such as staff accommodation and a history of racial exclusion, remain hidden, contributes to – both consciously and unconsciously – a continuation of already established exclusive suburban lifestyles of privacy and leisure.
On the one hand, advertisements detach luxury properties from public governance and deteriorating service provisions. This strategy reinforces the home as a private nuclear family-oriented enclave that is both protected from chaotic public spaces but still dependent on the continuity of racialized labour structures. On the other hand, estate agents detach properties from the colonial and apartheid segregation policies and ideals that constructed the northern suburbs throughout the twentieth century to facilitate seemingly more inclusive ways of living together in the northern suburbs. However, the way in which estate agents re-envision suburbs as multiracial reveals that they do not question the exclusivity of the suburbs.
The marketing work of agencies and estate agents collectively reinforces imaginaries of further enclaved suburbs. Although estate agents and residents also defy and disrupt established suburban expectations through everyday actions, the mass reproduction of advertisements spreads across urban spaces as an ‘aesthetics of imagination’. The advertisements ‘flood’ the senses of the consumers and ‘the perceptions they provide are “real” enough’ (Buck-Morss Reference Buck-Morss1992: 22), thus reasserting their visual dominance and ubiquitous presence. Importantly, detached intimacy is not just something that happens within the real estate sector; it requires the work of a variety of suburban actors, from domestic workers and gardeners to residents, and is arguably a way for people to grapple with the unequal premises of being in the world. What the lens of the real estate sector shows, and specifically the actions of Vuyo, Bongani, Amelia and Emily, is how detached intimacy never establishes itself in a totalizing capacity but rather is reasserted through its reproduction.
Acknowledgements
I thank the research participants who shared their time, perspectives and experiences with me. Thank you to the editors of this special issue for feedback throughout the writing process, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers for their generous comments and constructive critique. I thank my supervisors Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and Kerry Ryan Chance for their continuous insightful feedback. This research is part of the Norwegian Research Council-funded project ‘Enclaving: Patterns of global futures in three African cities’ (project number 274943).
Oda Eiken Maraire is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen in Norway and is part of the research project ‘Enclaving: Patterns of global futures in three African cities’. Her doctoral project explores connections between the real estate industry and processes of enclaving in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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