It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called ‘the bloodless revolution.’ It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets.”

Noah points out the hypocrisy of how people address apartheid and how racial logic infuses retrospective discussions of apartheid. The common epithet “the bloodless revolution” is a misnomer, because of the violence visited upon Black and Colored folks both throughout apartheid and during its long dissolution. This nickname has racist implications for the value of Black lives.

“The stereotypes of Zulu and Xhosa women were as ingrained as those of the men. Zulu women were well behaved and dutiful. Xhosa women were immoral and unfaithful. And here was my mother, his tribal enemy, a Xhosa woman alone with two small children—one of them a mixed child, no less. ‘Oh, you’re a Xhosa,’ he said. ‘That explains it. Disgusting woman. Tonight you’re going to learn your lesson.’”

One of the tools of apartheid was building animosity between different African tribes. One of the most prominent rivalries is between the Xhosa and Zulu, which are both Bantu-speaking tribes. Noah describes how the stereotypes and hatred built by the apartheid regime put him and his mother in a life-or-death situation when they get in a minibus driven by a Zulu man.

“In any society built on institutional racism, race mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Race mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.”

Noah describes one type of Crime in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa: being “mixed.” Apartheid sought to divide and hierarchize people by race, but “mixed” people show the inherent absurdity and injustice of this system. The apartheid government therefore went to great lengths to prosecute “race mixing.”

“Queen would walk next to me and act like she was my mother, and my mother would walk a few steps behind, like she was the maid working for the colored woman. I’ve got dozens of pictures of me walking with this woman who looks like me but who isn’t my mother. And the black woman standing behind us who looks like she’s photobombing the picture, that’s my mom.”

Patricia’s Everyday Life Amid Systemic Racism necessitates that she develop clever ways to prevent Noah from being taken from her. Realizing that Noah appears Colored, her Colored friends pretend to be Noah’s mother, while Patricia walks behind them in a maid’s uniform, pretending to be their servant. This trick relies on law enforcement using their preconceived racial stereotypes to assume Queen is Noah’s mother. In this way, Patricia uses the racist logic of apartheid to protect her and Noah where she is able.

“We adopted the religion of our colonizers, but most people held onto the old ancestral ways, too, just in case. In South Africa, faith in the Holy Trinity exists quite comfortably alongside belief in witchcraft, in casting spells and putting curses on one’s enemies. I come from a country where people are more likely to visit sangomas—shamans, traditional healers, pejoratively known as witch doctors—than they are to visit doctors of Western medicine. I come from a country where people have been arrested and tried for witchcraft—in a court of law. I’m not talking about the 1700s. I’m talking about five years ago.”

Noah complicates the role of religion in the everyday lives of South Africans. Though Christian colonists forced South Africans to adopt Christianity, the indigenous beliefs in South Africa also remained. This has created a unique blend of Christianity and indigenous religion among Noah’s family. Even amid racial violence and oppression, Black South Africans find comfort in chosen actions, people, practices, and objects. 

“I became a chameleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color. I didn’t look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.”

Noah describes how he manipulated people’s External and Internal Perceptions of Identity. Depending on where he is, people interpret Noah’s racial identity differently. Here, he describes how he purposefully alters peoples’ perception of his identity to fit in with a wide variety of crowds. Because people often tie their identity to their language, he learns many languages and accents to use with different groups of people.

“The homelands were, ostensibly, the original homes of South Africa’s tribes, sovereign and semi-sovereign ‘nations’ where black people would be ‘free.’ Of course, this was a lie. For starters, despite the fact that black people made up over 80 percent of South Africa’s population, the territory allocated for the homelands was about 13 percent of the country’s land. There was no running water, no electricity. People lived in huts. Where South Africa’s white countryside was lush and irrigated and green, the black lands were overpopulated and overgrazed, the soil depleted and eroding.”

Throughout the memoir, Noah describes the types of places that Black and Colored people can live in during apartheid. In an attempt to build an all-white African nation, almost four million South Africans were shipped north to what the government called the “homelands.” As Noah describes, these homelands were starved of resources and economic opportunity. The minority white South African apartheid government did not care about the comfort, well-being, or lives of its Black citizens.

“If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind. My mother spoke to me like an adult. She was always telling me stories, giving me lessons, Bible lessons especially. She was big into Psalms. I had to read Psalms every day. She would quiz me on it. ‘What does this passage mean? What does it mean to you? How do you apply it to your life?’ That was every day of my life. My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to think.”

Noah describes how Patricia shaped his character. Under apartheid, Noah and the people he identifies with are not supposed to receive a full education. They are supposed to be trained to do their labor and accept the lot in life apartheid has given them. Patricia teaches Noah to ask questions and be a thoughtful interlocutor.

“My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back, I realize she raised me like a white kid—not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered. We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”

Patricia does not let the law stop her from raising Noah as he deserves to be raised. Often, children get their sense of self-worth from how a parent treats them or frames the world’s expectations of them. Patricia trains Noah not to be inhibited by the racist laws of apartheid, but to have faith in himself, his own reason, and his own thoughts.

“Dear Noah,

‘Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.’ –Proverbs 22:15

Your school marks this term have been very disappointing, and your behavior in class continues to be disruptive and disrespectful. It is clear from your actions that you do not respect me. You do not respect your teachers. Learn to respect women in your life. The way you treat me and the way you treat your teachers will be the way you treat other women in the world. Learn to buck that trend now and you will be a better man because of it. Because of your behavior I am grounding you for one week. There will be no television and no video games.

Yours sincerely,

Mom.”

Chapter 6 briefly adopts an epistolary form as Noah and his mother write letters back and forth to one another to address their smaller disputes. Patricia started this practice so she would have enough time to fully think through her responses to Noah, who is quick-witted. This letter contributes in several ways to both Patricia’s and Noah’s characterization. The biblical quotes show the importance of religion to Patricia’s life. The contents describe some of Noah’s “naughty” behavior. It also demonstrates how Patricia raised Noah to respect women and to avoid the patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes held by some of the men around him as he grows up.

“Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships ever since: you do not own the thing you love.”

Noah’s dog Fufi teaches him an important lesson about how to treat the people he loves. Loving someone means respecting that person’s autonomy. This lesson foreshadows the troubled relationship Noah observes between Abel and Patricia. Having learned this lesson, Noah is able to identify what is toxic about their relationship.

“While I was eating he got up and brought an oversized photo album back to the table. ‘I’ve been following you,’ he said, opening up the album. It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done: every newspaper article where my name was mentioned, every magazine cover I’d appeared on, right down to the tiniest club listings—everything from the beginning of my career all the way through to that week. He was smiling so big as he took me through it, looking at the headlines.”

Noah continuously struggles with his identity. Growing up under apartheid made it difficult for him to have a close relationship with his father, Robert. Finding out in adulthood that Robert has followed his career and made a scrapbook out of his achievements resolves some of the insecurities of identity that Noah felt growing up. It also characterizes Robert. Though he is a quiet man, he shows his love in other ways.

“I was the anomaly wherever we lived. In Hillbrow, we lived in a white area, and nobody looked like me. In Soweto, we lived in a black area, and nobody looked like me. Eden Park was a colored area. In Eden Part, everyone looked like me, but we couldn’t have been more different. It was the biggest mind-bender I’ve ever experienced. The animosity I’ve felt from the colored people I encountered growing up was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.”

Throughout his youth, Noah struggles with External and Internal Perceptions of Identity. He knows that he identifies as Black. Despite this, he feels like an outlier wherever he goes, because he does not look like the people he identifies most with. In turn, the people he looks most like do not identify with him, since he is culturally Black. People crave connection and common experience, and Noah is denied those things growing up.

“Lorenzo was everything I wasn’t. He was popular. He was white. He’d upset the balance of everything by asking out the only colored girl in school. Girls loved him, and he was dumb as rocks. A nice guy, but kind of a bad boy. Girls did his homework for him; he was that guy. He was really good-looking, too. I stood no chance, As devastated as I was, I understood why Maylene made the choice that she did. I would have picked Lorenzo over me, too.”

This quotation shows that colonial racial hierarchies persist even after apartheid ends. Noah italicizes “white” to stress that this is the biggest factor in girls liking Lorenzo. To a degree, Noah has internalized this logic. He is hurt, but he does not blame the girl for the unjust social context in which she operates, and he thinks he’d make the same choice if he were her.

“I was an overnight success. I had so many customers I was turning kids away. I had a rule: I would take five orders a day, high bidders only. I’d make so much that I could buy my lunch using other kid’s money and keep the lunch money my mom gave me for pocket cash.”

Crime in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa is a major factor in everyday life. This is the precursor to Noah’s eventual illegal CD-burning business. He is a savvy businessman who immediately turns a profit. Noah uses his businesses, legal and illegal, to craft a role for himself in a society that does not otherwise welcome him.

“I kept waiting for it to be a trick, for them to turn and say, ‘It’s you!’ They didn’t. Eventually I felt so invisible I almost wanted to take credit. I wanted to jump up and point at the TV and say, ‘Are you people blind?! That’s me! Can’t you see that’s me?!’ But of course I didn’t. And they couldn’t. These people had been so messed up by their own construct of race they could not see that the white person they were looking for was sitting right in front of them.”

Though his friend Teddy’s accomplice on the security footage is recognizably Noah, none of the adults believe it’s him because they perceive the person on the camera to be white. Noah’s “anomalous” identity reveals the constructed nature of race: their rigid perception of racial categories and characteristics prevent them from seeing that he is the culprit they are looking for. This frustrates Noah, who feels invalidated by the experience.

“Now the whole night came rushing back and I saw it from her point of view. She probably hadn’t wanted to go to the dance with me in the first place; she probably owed Tom a favor and Tom could talk anyone into anything. Then I’d left her waiting for me for an hour and she was not happy. Then she got into the car and it was the first time we had ever been alone, and she realized I couldn’t even hold a conversation with her. I’d driven her around and gotten lost in the dark. She was probably terrified. Then we got to the dance and she didn’t speak anyone’s language. She didn’t know anyone. She didn’t even know me.”

His failed relationship with Babiki provides an important bit of character growth for Noah. After a disastrous night, he develops empathy for her situation, whereas before he was just excited about bringing a beautiful girl to the dance. Having empathy for people and being able to imagine their feelings is an important emotional tool. It differentiates Noah from men like Abel, who are unable to empathize with women and treat them like tools or as subservient. 

“People always lecture the poor: ‘Take responsibility for yourself! Make something of yourself!’ But with what raw materials are the poor to make something of themselves? People love to say, ‘Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.’ What they don’t say is, ‘And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.’”

Throughout his memoir, Noah critiques the way some people talk about poor people. Some people discuss poverty as a choice, a moral failing, or a result of laziness. Noah points out that it is almost always systemic injustice that traps people in cycles of poverty. He critiques the common expression, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime,” pointing out that it is unreasonable to expect a man to feed his family if you teach him to fish but refuse to give him a rod. Similarly, poor people need material resources to provide them with economic equity and compensate for how they have been exploited.

“I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific was it? The thing Africans don’t have that the Jewish people do is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them.”

Noah pushes back against a Eurocentric framing of history, pointing out that atrocities committed against non-white racialized peoples, especially Black people, often go undocumented by Western sources. This lack of documentation leads people to disregard these atrocities. Noah alludes to the “Rubber Terror” in the Congo from 1885 to 1908, led by the Belgian King Leopold II, who declared himself ruler of the Congo Free State. Anywhere from 1.5 to 13 million Congolese people were killed in this regime’s exploitative and violent quest for wealth. This massive range is a testament to the historic disregard and inattention given to atrocities committed against African peoples.

“The walls of apartheid were coming down just as American hip-hop was blowing up, and hip-hop made it cool to be from the hood. Before, living in a township was something to be ashamed of; it was the bottom of the bottom. Then we had movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and they made the hood look cool. The characters in those movies, in the songs, they owned it. Kids in the townships started doing the same, wearing their identity as a badge of honor: you were no longer from the township—you were from the hood.”

Apartheid ends as Noah enters his preteen and teenage years, and he describes how life begins to change in small ways. He attends integrated schools and starts his tuckshop business, which makes him spare money he can spend on American goods. American hip-hop changes the way people in the “ghetto” perceive of their township. They now liken it to “the hood,” and find a new way to take pride in their neighborhoods. Black South Africans reclaim their power and pride in the places they were forcibly relocated to.

“I chose to live in that world, but I wasn’t from that world. If anything, I was an imposter. Day to day I was in it as much as everyone else, but the difference was that in the back of my mind I knew I had other options. I could leave. They couldn’t.”

Though Noah dabbles in petty crime, he recognizes the privilege he has when compared to his friends who live in Alexandra. Noah has a way out of the life of petty crime, due to the privileges of having a mother who worked hard to get them a house in Highlands North and get Noah a private school education. Noah never judges any of his friends who cannot leave the cycle of crime in Alexandra; rather, he points out the inherent difficulty in escaping a cycle built to trap you.

“It’s the same in America. If you’re poor, if you don’t know how the system works, you can slip through the cracks, and the next thing you know you’re in this weird purgatory where you’re not in prison but you’re not not in prison. You haven’t been convicted of any crime, but you’re still locked up and can’t get out.”

Noah describes the criminal justice system in South Africa. Here, and throughout the memoir, Noah is careful to point out what is and isn’t similar in South Africa and the United States. The criminal justice system in both places is similar in that it disproportionately affects poor people, Black people, and Brown people. For instance, New York City’s Rikers Island is one of the most infamously dangerous and inhumane jails in the country. There, 9 out of 10 inmates have not been convicted of any crime and are awaiting trial. Infamously, a young Black man named Kalief Browder spent three years in Rikers Island for allegedly stealing a backpack, though he never stood trial or was found guilty. He spent over 700 days of his incarceration in solitary confinement, and not long after his release he died by suicide (Schwirtz, Michael and Michael Winerip. “Khalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide.” The New York Times, 2015).

“What if I went to the black corner? I know that I’m black and I identify as black, but I’m not a black person on the face of it, so would the black guys understand why I was walking over? And what kind of mayhem would I start by going there? Because going to the black corner as a perceived colored person might anger the colored gangs even more than going to the colored corner as a fake colored person. Because that’s what had happened to me my entire life.”

Noah describes how people’s perception of his identity causes him to question his self-presentation for his own safety. This questioning causes distress, as he is not free to simply be who he knows he is. He does not question his internal perception of his identity as a Black man, but he is forced to consider how other people will react to him. He must weigh the politics of appearing to identify a certain way in a given situation.