Abstract
Using semiotic analysis, this article evaluates how Black women are portrayed in postapartheid
films in South Africa. Three high-profile feature films, namely Yesterday (2004),
Tsotsi (2005), and Jerusalema (2008), produced during a five-year period between 2004 and
2008, were examined for their portrayal of Black female characters in terms of nuance and
complexity. The article draws on insights arising from Black feminist film criticism and
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and focuses predominantly on the portrayal of four key Black
female characters, namely Yesterday (in Yesterday), Lucky’s mother (in Jerusalema),
Miriam (in Tsotsi) and Pumla (in Tsotsi). Gendered modes of portrayal identified include
objectification, voyeurism, motherhood, domestication and single parenthood. The article
finds that some of the patterns that characterised the cinema of apartheid continue to persist
in post-apartheid films. One of the major concerns with the reviewed films is their tendency
to confine Black women to ‘the home’ through a naturalist frame, which presents them as
being naturally equipped to bear difficulties. In the Gramscian sense, such depiction
functions to ensure that these women do not question the injustice of their position because
they are constantly shown as being naturally equipped to deal with any kind of hardship.
However, there are a few exceptions where a counter-narrative challenging the traditional
representation was evinced. Overall, the corpus of films examined struggles to render a
nuanced and dynamic representation of Black women. The article concludes that the South
African cinema during colonialism and apartheid 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.