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

In the pre-chapter prologue, Noah explains the back-and-forth colonization of South Africa by the Dutch East India Company and Britain. During their second rule, Dutch Afrikaners went all over the world to “study institutionalized racism” (19). They took these lessons back to South Africa to create “the most advanced system of racial oppression” in the world (20). Noah compares it to the United States’ Indigenous expulsion, Black chattel enslavement, and segregation combined.

Noah explains the racial caste system in apartheid-era South Africa. As opposed to the United States’ “one drop” rule, which categorized people with any degree of Black ancestry as Black, people who have ancestry from a combination of Black, white, and Asian people are called Colored. White, Black, and Colored communities were all segregated from each other. 

With one white and one Black parent, the young Noah identifies as Black and “mixed,” which is an illegal identity in apartheid South Africa. It was illegal for white and non-white people to have sexual relationships. Noah explains that such “race mixing” (21) reveals the “unsustainable and incoherent” nature of the apartheid system, with its strict separation of races (21). Children of this dual ancestry thus pose an embodied threat to the logic of apartheid. 

Noah’s mom, Patricia, is a “rebel.” Not wanting to be a maid or factory worker—the two potential jobs for Black South African women—she took secretarial courses and was hired as a “token” typist in the 1980s, when South Africa was facing international pressure for the human rights violations of apartheid. Patricia refuses to live in the suburban township of Back laborers her family has been relocated to, called Soweto. During this period, Black residents are outlawed in Johannesburg, and all Black South Africans need to carry a work ID in the city. Though Patricia is arrested repeatedly for flouting these rules, she secretly rents a flat in the city.

Patricia lives in the “cosmopolitan and liberal” (25) neighborhood of Hillbrow. Many people there try to lead integrated social lives despite apartheid’s rules, though this is very dangerous. One person she feels safe with is her neighbor, a reserved man who was 46 to her 24. In February 1984, Patricia has a child with him. Noah’s father is not listed on his birth certificate, as that would be illegal. His mother lies and says his father is from Swaziland: as such, Noah’s official birth certificate lists him as Swazi, even though in reality he is Xhosa and Swiss German.

Noah can only be with his father indoors. Outside, they walk on opposite sides of the street to avoid raising suspicion. Patricia finds “cracks in the system” (28) to keep them from getting arrested. It is illegal to be “mixed”—the child of a Black and white parent—but not to be Colored—to have two Colored parents. Patricia invites friends and neighbors who are Colored to go on outings with her and Noah, while she walks behind them as if she is their maid.

In the city, full of Black, white, and Colored people, Noah and his mother can go relatively unnoticed. When Noah spends weeks with his grandmother in the Black-only township of Soweto, he is only allowed in their walled-in yard. If the police see him, they will remove him from his mother’s custody.

Noah grows up surrounded by powerful women. The only semi-regular man in his life is his maternal grandfather Temperance Noah, who lives with his second family. His grandmother, Frances Noah, is an active, calculating, and sharp-minded woman. They also live with his great-grandmother Koko, who is smart but fully blind. Many Black children in apartheid-era South Africa are essentially fatherless, as men are away for months at a time working in mines, in prison, or in exile.

Female social life in Soweto centers around religion. The township has about a million people, but is not allowed to have stores, bars, restaurants, or shops, and has no paved roads, sewage, or electricity. Black market shops operate out of homes, like spaza grocery shops in garages or shebeen speakeasies in the backs of houses.

The government allots to each laborer a small plot of land that families build up slowly, as their finances allow. His grandmother has a two-room house with two backyard shanties she rents out to migrant workers. Their house has one outside spigot for four families and a tin outhouse shared by six or seven families. 

When he is five years old, it is pouring rain outside and Noah has to poop. Dreading the outhouse and accompanying flies, he sets up a newspaper to poop on in the kitchen “like a puppy” (43). He is doing his business when he notices Koko by the stove. Though she is blind and cannot see him, she hears something happening and keeps calling out to ask who it is. He finishes his business as quietly as he can and sneaks away, throwing his newspaper-wrapped poop in the trash. 

Later, when the rest of his family gets home, Koko tells Noah’s mother and grandmother about the mysterious sound and smell. They find his poop in the trash can. Since Koko believed no one was home and Noah doesn’t confess, his mother believes a demon came into the house. They burn his poop in the driveway, singing prayers. His grandmother recruits other women to join them in prayer to cast away the demon. That night, Noah prays an apology to God for taking up his time with grannies praying about a “turd.”

In the pre-chapter prologue, Noah discusses the importance of language to identity. Shared language binds people together while differing languages can be used to ostracize people. Apartheid-era South Africa did the latter. The government purposefully isolated linguistic communities, like the Xhosa and Zulu, so they would believe they were different and not unite to resist their oppression.

Noah stands out among the Black residents of Soweto, who call him “Indoda yomlungu,” which means “white man” (51). His mother never discusses race, so initially he has no concept of his dad as “white” or himself as “mixed.” He learns to connect with people via language. His mother made him learn English first, “the language of money” (52). Around the house they speak Xhosa, the “home language” (52). A young Noah observes how his mother speaks Zulu, German, Afrikaans, or Sotho to best adapt to and ease a social situation, and he learns to mimic her. At one point, some Zulu men plan to mug him but back off when he speaks Zulu to them, leading them to believe he is part of their tribe. He becomes a linguistic chameleon to survive.

As apartheid ends, Noah gets a scholarship to a private Catholic school that has “all kinds of kids” (55) sitting, learning, and socializing together. While he values this experience, it keeps him ignorant of the educational racism that surrounds him. At the end of grade six he transfers into a government school and gets placed in the “smart” class, made up almost entirely of white students. At recess, he sees that the majority of students in the school are actually Black. The two groups segregate at lunch and Noah feels caught in the middle.

An Indian student named Theesan calls Noah his “fellow anomaly” (57). When he learns how many languages Noah can speak, he makes Noah show off this “amazing trick” to the Black students. The students tell Noah they are in the “B classes.” At the end of the day, Noah asks the counselor if he can move to the B classes. After many protestations that he is ruining his future by associating with “those kids,” she relents. Even though people perceive him as Colored, when forced to choose a race, Noah “chose black” because of the friends, family, and culture he has always been surrounded by.