DIE ANTWOORD
dis iz wot zef is n shit
Flashback. It’s 1970-ish in South Africa. Apartheid would be in full swing for another couple of decades. In the white fringes of Cape Town and Pretoria, a culture was forming…a group of rednecks known as Zef.
Back then, Zef was associated with mullets, old puttering cars, cheap clothes, hard liquor and a lifestyle only a few tiers above the country’s slums. The word was synonymous with white trash, or anything wack or lame.
A genuine Zef culture still exists in the rougher parts of South African cities, but its original form languished and turned into a kitschy memory. That is, until now.
DIS IS HOW TO B SUPER ZEF
"Zef is, you're poor but you're fancy. You're poor but you're sexy, you've got style"
ZEF SLANG
ZORZ > HORNY
VUIL > DIRTY, COOL, ILL
GEBOOST > TURBO BOOSTER
SLYM KONYN > SLIME BUNNY (VAGINA)
POES > SOMEONE WHO ACTS LIKE A CUNT
POES > TO PUNCH SOMEONE IN THE FACE
POES COOL > UNBELEIVEABLY FUCKING COOL
POES CRUX > really fucking big
BPP (BINNE POES PINK) UNBELIVEABLY PINK
wat kyk jy? > what are you looking at?
vitamin B+C > brandy and coke
sKere > scissors or scissoring
chere > chick
Brannewynvlekke > small dents and scratches on a car
Ching > money
Loodkettie > gun
Darkies >sunglasses Vroetelvarkie > a sugar daddy
Karate water > brandy
Graft > working or place of employment
Sponskind > a softie
Pyle > cigarettes
ZEF is presumably derived from a car which was quite popular in South Africa with the working class until the early 1970s: the Ford Zephyr.
The Zephyr later became a favourite among owners who liked to soup-up their engines and add fat tyres with shiny rims.
With these souped-up Zephyrs, men would dice and wheel spin down the streets late at night. People from that era say these were mostly rough guys - real zefs.
“Crocs are zef. Flat-tops are zef. Wearing a cowboy hat to the club, that’s quite zef,” says Chopper Charlie, a South African blogger and DJ, while munching on a pizza at a seaside Cape Town café. “Ed Hardy prints. Ceramic clowns. Maltese poodles. I once saw a house with a life-size cement giraffe in the front garden. That was zef.”