[4] In his introduction to Emergency Poems Peter Horn described Gottschalk's contribution as follows: "wit and conceit also seem to me to describe most adequately the poetic and aesthetic vehicles which Gottschalk chooses to address the political in poetry.

What is central to satire and to wit is not, as popular misconception may have it, its comic quality, the funniness, but the sudden flashlike insight into the incongruous, as Freud has clearly shown in his study on the Witz.

His modernisation of the traditional African praise poem "shows their continued existence and meaning for large portions of the population.

"[6] In 2021 he published Cosmonauts do it in Heaven, a collection of poems on spaceflight and astronomy He moved to the University of the Western Cape in 1984 and served as head of department in 2004-2006.

In April 2023, Gottschalk was bestowed the National Order of Ikhamanga (Silver) by the South African Government for "using your creativity to draw critical attention to oppressive and unjust laws through performative political poetry.