These two artist's reconstructions show our evolving conceptions of A. africanus. The painting on the left, from the 1960's, is incorrect, for it depicts a creature who is imperfectly upright, stands on chimp-like feet (which would simply not serve for efficient bi-pedal locomotion), and carries its skull forward on its spine like a chimp or gorilla. This was an effort to depict the evolutionary transition from apes to humans, but it got some key details wrong. We know now that australopithecines stood upright and were well equipped for bipedalism.
The more recent depiction on the right 
is probably closer to reality, based on current knowledge. A. africanus was efficiently bipedal and upright, and the posture suggested by the alignment of skull and spine is like our own. The artist shows a family group — a nuclear family, apparently, and not the extended kinship group that would probably have been more typical of this species. These individuals are also shown as dark-skinned and relatively hairless.
These features are educated guesses based on two considerations: first, to walk and run upright efficiently in open country near the Equator, hominids would have to have an efficient heat diffusion system to prevent their being overcome — or perhaps even killed — by the chemical heat caused by extended muscular exertion.
Assuredly, at some point, the ancestors of modern humans evolved a skin like our own which acts as a cooling system. Water from perspiration is evaporated on the surface of the skin, and this cools the blood near the surface, and the blood in turn keeps the brain in its functional temperature range. To work or move effectively in the tropics, the skin has to be naked for the cooling process to work.
Second, to survive under Africa's equatorial sun, a naked skin would have to be protected by a considerable amount of melanin, the dark pigment that protects tissue from ultraviolet light. Hominids who lived out in the open would therefore have had a protective barrier of head hair to protect their brains.
So, did A. africanus look like the second painting? Perhaps. Some scientists insist, however, that this species lived in wooded environments, not out in the open plains.
