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.