“The Men Who Speak Gayle”- A Short Film About the Codified South African Queer Language.

Screenshot of Louis van Brakel in Andrew Brukman’s “The Men Who Speak Gayle”.

In the short documentary, young drag performer Nathan Kennedy ventures to the small South African town of Prince Albert to find Louis van Brakel, a retired air steward who is one of the few people left who speaks Gayle. Originally developed by the queer POC community in District 6 during the apartheid era, Gayle is best described as a secret language that allowed communication within queer community during a time when homosexuality was illegal and the oppressive government monitored and censored any queer activities.

Drag performer Nathan Kennedy in “The Men Who Speak Gayle”.

This shared coded language enabled more freedom of movement and expression in the South African queer community of the 1960s, and it “forms an essential part of the South African LGBTQI+ cultural lexicon. It is a language which fostered a sense of community and safety amongst a group of outsiders trying to survive during the country’s most painful chapter; a moment in time when their very existence was essentially outlawed. Gayle provided a sense of identity, unity and community for LGBTQI+ people, but most importantly it played a major role in the development of South Africa’s LGBTQI+ society and culture,” as South African History Online points out.

The film’s director, Andrew Brukman, is hoping to turn the short documentary into a full-length feature. In an interview with NATAAL, he said: “The film provides an alternative history of the LGBTQ community in South Africa that has never seen before. Many QTPoC were original Gayle speakers and, like today, lived in outrageously oppressive communities. Gayle is about more than a hilarious language - it’s about how this community finds resilience in the most unexpected ways and it shows how we’ve always had to fight for every day of our lives”.

The Men Who Speak Gayle is free to watch on YouTube until 14 August 2020.