We explore the relational nature of race and racism as manifested in women's narratives within the Apartheid Archive Project—a compendium of narratives related to quotidian apartheid experiences generated by “ordinary” people. We argue that apartheid was not only a system of interconnected social, political and economic structures that oppressed, but that it required those who lived under it to enforce it in supremely intimate ways. It is from within this context that this article explores the relational nature of apartheid narratives by black women, with an emphasis on polysemy, or the possibility that the narratives may have multiple meanings and functions. We found that their stories reflected a diverse range of social positioning, with discursive themes drawing on both hegemonic and subordinated discourses of race and gender, and reflecting the nature of black women's social locations within South African society in both the past and the present. Discursive themes illustrating black women's silences, solidarity, voice and mastery are highlighted in the article. Utilising elements of critical discourse analysis within a qualitative framework, this article makes provisional commentaries about the intersection of race and gender during apartheid, and in post-apartheid South Africa, and attempts to highlight the need for an ongoing critical engagement with racialised and gendered subjectivities as historical and contemporary social phenomena.
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