Connie Chiume, whose decades-long career took her from being an early Black television actor in South Africa to the Marvel superhero universe with the “Black Panther” films, died on Tuesday in Johannesburg. She was 72.

Her death, in a hospital, was announced on Wednesday by her family in a statement. It did not specify the illness for which she was being treated.

Ms. Chiume’s career spanned more than 40 years, from the last days of apartheid, when few Black actors appeared on television, to the boom years of the post-apartheid entertainment industry, when Black performers and filmmakers began rewriting its script. Ms. Chiume continued to work as streaming services brought new job opportunities, introducing her to a new generation of viewers.

Her Hollywood recognition came late in life, when she appeared in Marvel’s “Black Panther” in 2018 and returned for the sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” in 2022. Ms. Chiume played the elder of a mining tribe who had a seat in the throne room of Wakanda, a fictional African kingdom that had escaped colonialism and that holds a deep symbolic significance for fans of the films and the comic books on which they are based.

Ms. Chiume had a small part, but it was, she said, the recognition she had dreamed of, appearing alongside the Hollywood actors Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Angela Bassett.

“I was cast with them, which means the director saw something in me, that I’m also on that caliber,” she told the South African outlet News24 in 2022.