Selling with the san: Representations of bushman people and artefacts in South African print advertisements

This paper examines the use of visual images of the Bushman peoples (San) and their cultural objects in contemporary South African advertising. As an image is a site of meaning, the relationship between the people represented in the advertisement and the culture for which the advertisement is produced demonstrates strategies of subjection and power. Within the context of the advertisement, I explore the extent to which San people are appropriated by the consumer society and their ritual objects reduced or altered to a Western aesthetic dimension. The contexts and ideas of the producing society determine production of the visual object.

The relationship between the San “artefact” and the advertisement as a work of “art” reflects a dimension of South African social and political processes. Representations of the two juxtaposed societies suggest that the value systems and cultural attitudes of the dominant group present contested domains which are explored. Bushmen represent a malleable signifier which is used to promote an apparently/ ostensibly applied vision of an emerging non‐racial country.