‘Your husbands are bringing it to you’: South African rural women and HIV in Darrell Roodt’s Yesterday (2004)

Abstract

The ways in which rural women living with and/or affected by HIV are portrayed in films can potentially influence how social transformation is imagined, including the extent to which the women can be involved in problem-solving processes. This is because, in addition to conceptualising the problem, such representations often place women in a certain position in relation to, or within, the problematic situation, which in turn influences how solutions are framed. This paper uses a discursive approach to explore the portrayal of South African rural women living with and/or affected by HIV in Darrell Roodt's film, Yesterday (2004), which is set in rural KwaZulu-Natal. It considers how the film deals with the tension between structural violence and rural women's agency in grappling with HIV. Structural violence has a significant impact on the experiences of rural women and, hence, their health outcomes. However, when representing rural women, too heavy an emphasis on structural violence runs the risk of portraying them as passive or helpless victims, thus severely limiting their agency.

Gender, justice and empowerment: creating the world we want to see

“…Mdege critiques the practical application of gender norms in the 2004 South African film Yesterday. The author questions whether the portrayal of one particular woman in the film is a helpful way of understanding South African gender norms, particularly in the context of HIV and AIDS ( Mdege 2019 ). Mdege notes that while the film unpacks the structural constraints of living in rural South Africa – poverty, lack of services, violence – it also tends to portray the main character as a helpless woman, devoid of choice.…”