Over the last few days, #SliceOfGasant columnist Gasant Abarder has been extra windgat after discovering that he is an expert on all things gham – the language and behaviour of the awesome folks of the Cape Flats. Here he presents an introduction to all those who don’t know the lekkerness of gham and probably never will!
Last week, someone close to me sent me a peculiar screengrab of a ChatGPT response to a prompt. The prompt asked for information about the Cape Flats dialect called gham, used mostly by coloured people, as it relates to language.
The response was: ‘Due to its secretive nature, gham taal has not been the subject of extensive academic research. However, some studies have explored aspects of prison language in South Africa. Wilfried Scharf at the University of Cape Town has written about the linguistic practices of the Number Gangs.’
And then the bombshell: ‘Journalistic works, such as those by Gasant Abarder and documentaries like “Four Corners” (2013), also touch on the use of gham taal in everyday life.’
I’ll take it. And I will thus provide a concise summary of what gham is all about (outside of italics because let’s normalise it) with my expert knowledge. Thanks for the street cred, ChatGPT. But don’t even try if you’re not gham. It’s elusive if it doesn’t course through your veins, and no ‘put-on’ radio ad trying to mimic a gham accent can emulate it genuinely.
(Disclaimer: AI chats hallucinate. For instance, ‘Four Corners’ was a feature film set on the Cape Flats, not a documentary. Gham, both in language and behaviour, has little to do with prison language, which has its own dialect called Sabela. But, having said that, I am happy to take up the mantle! One of our three guesses ain’t bad.)
So, let’s get this right: gham is more than a language. It’s in the actions, behaviours, and the flow of how you speak it that weaves into the rich tapestry of the folks who live on the Cape Flats and their daily interfaces with each other. If you’re telling a story in gham, without including sound effects and action-filled, animated re-enactments, it’s not a real story.
Let me use the example of the incredible Cape Flats contribution to local cuisine, the gatsby. Like its people and traditions, the gatsby is a mash-up of all the lekker stuff that makes each bite a delight.
It’s a roll the size of a large French loaf but broader, filled with a perfectly seasoned base of hot chips, a protein filler like masala steak, viennas, polony, hake or calamari, and a combination of delectable sauces. The most gham thing you can do is to share one on the bonnet of a car outside the place you bought it from. Plates? Nah, the paper it’s wrapped in will suffice and let the chips fall where it will.
It is usually best washed down with a fruit dairy blend – the most famous of which is the peach-flavoured Cabana juice.
There are strict rules for gatsby-eating etiquette, otherwise, it isn’t authentic. It needs to be white bread; none of this sourdough nonsense. The loose chips are for the person who claims it. The size of the portion is not equal to the monetary contribution. Anything more than cut-in-four is sacrilege. Salads are not recommended as it makes the roll soggy. Most importantly, it can never, never ever, for heaven’s sake, be called a ‘gebba’ as has been the wont of some recently.
I use the gatsby as an analogy because gham has been passed on from suburb to suburb. The earliest recollections of gatsby-eating law emanate from institutions like Golden Dish in Gatesville, Athlone. There are pretenders to the crown who will gentrify this work of art with all sorts of things like tofu, salads or vegan steak. That is a sub, Trevor from Newlands.
These laws, as ChatGPT correctly states, are not written in books, and there are no extensive studies. But my people spread the word in the way our childhood games spread from area to area. For instance: kennetjie – a game played with a plank and cricket bail- like device carved out of your mom’s broomstick; drie blikkies – played with three large coffee tins and a tennis ball; and Klawerjas – a card game superior to Poker in every possible way.
Dominoes may be a simple game around the campfire, but on the Cape Flats, where it is called dumms, it can lead to massive fallouts. There are even leagues and no coffee table is safe from the slamming of a domino onto its wooden surface.
The extraordinary thing is gham wasn’t shared on WhatsApp and social media the way the Gen-Zs do these days. It spread when cousins spent the school holidays at ouma’s house and passed it on from generation to generation.
So, there you have it. You can’t just know it. It’s part of your DNA. You can’t mos soema just sit with us.
Because I’m such an authority, I may just use my newfound cred to start my own gham AI and call it ChetGTi! Cos, is lekker hier innie kaap, mos!
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Picture: Jonathan Kemper / Unsplash
