South African Cinema and Its Depiction of Race, Gender, and Class: Portrayals of Black Women in Post-Apartheid South African Films

Abstract

This article is a semiotic analysis of the portrayal of Black women in three post-apartheid films in South Africa: Yesterday (2004), Tsotsi (2005), and Jerusalema (2008). Drawing on insights arising from Black feminist film criticism and Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this discussion focuses predominantly on the portrayal of four key Black female characters: Yesterday in Yesterday, Lucky’s mother in Jerusalema, Miriam in Tsotsi, and Pumla in Tsotsi, and various gendered portrayals including objectification, voyeurism, motherhood, domestication, and single parenthood. Some of the patterns that characterized apartheid-era cinema continue to persist in post-apartheid films, particularly the tendency to confine Black women to “the home” through a naturalist frame that presents them as naturally equipped to deal with any kind of hardship. In the Gramscian sense, such a depiction ensures that these women would not question the injustice of their position. However, there are also exceptions that present a counter-narrative to challenge traditional representations. Overall, the films discussed here generall seek to create nuanced and dynamic representations of Black women. During the eras of colonialism and apartheid, South African films established a multiform racist and sexist narrative, to use Foucauldian terms, while the new wave of post-apartheid films struggles to provide an equally multiform anti-racist and antisexist counter-narrative.