Trevor Noah, the acclaimed comedian and host of The Daily Show, is mixed race. His mother is a black South African, and his father is a white Swiss-German. At the time Noah was born, during the racial oppression of apartheid in South Africa, his existence was a crime. Apartheid dictated that blacks had no legal rights as humans and were to remain separated from the white South Africans. By creating a child together, both his parents broke the law and could have been sent to prison for five years.
Noah’s mother, Patricia, raised Noah by herself against all odds. She’d grown up impoverished, as all black families did, and was sent away to live with her paternal aunt as a young child. In this new environment, Patricia was one of more than a dozen children whose families couldn’t afford them or simply didn’t want them. They were put to work, helping farm whatever meager rations could be scraped together from the infertile land to which blacks were relegated.
Patricia was fortunate in her ability to attend a missionary school nearby, where she learned English. She took her education and used it to better her life, enrolling in a secretarial course and finding work in Johannesburg through a loophole in the laws. Willfully independent, always brazen, and consistently determined, Patricia moved secretly among white society, posing as a maid so she could live in Johannesburg (where blacks were forbidden to live). She decided to have a son with a white man as an act of defiance against the laws of oppression.
Noah’s early life was one of confinement. Apartheid was still law for the first five years of Noah’s life, and a mixed child in white society raised questions. Patricia could not be seen as Noah’s mother, since a black woman with a mixed child would be conspicuous. And Robert, Noah’s father, could not have any public involvement in his son’s life. The only times Noah and his father could visit were in Robert’s apartment for fear of being found out.
As Noah grew older and concealing his skin became more difficult, Patricia engaged the services of a colored woman to pose as his mother because of their likeness in skin tones. The colored race is a culturally constructed categorization of people with varied ethnic and racial heritages. It was not illegal to be a descendent of the colored race, meaning having two colored parents, but it was illegal to be the product of race mixing, or having a black parent and a white parent. During these moments, Patricia would follow Noah and this woman, posing as the black maid.
Even in Soweto, the black township Patricia was from, Noah was kept indoors. If the neighbors or police caught wind of a mixed-race boy belonging to a black family, Noah could be sent to a colored orphanage and his family imprisoned. A life without friends and freedom encompasses Noah’s earliest memories.
When Nelson Mandela was freed and apartheid abolished, Noah was able to enter the world, but his struggles to belong were just beginning. Noah struggled to fit into a cleanly categorized race, which further separated him from his community and children at school. He felt black because he was raised within the black culture, but his light skin tone told another story. He looked colored, but he was not culturally colored. He was part white, but no one thought of him as such.
It wasn’t infrequent that Noah would find himself stranded on a playground not knowing which group he belonged to. The quandary of how he fit in would rear up again and again as Noah moved from school to school, neighborhood to neighborhood, with Noah always feeling like an outsider.
To counteract his ostracization, Noah became a master of languages. There were 11 official languages in South Africa, a policy created to ensure no black tribe felt unrepresented in the new democracy. His mother made English his first language to give him a leg up in life, and he spoke her native language of Xhosa, his father’s language of German, the language of his oppressors (Afrikaans, created by the Dutch colonists pre-apartheid), and many other African tribal languages he picked up on the streets. Speaking the languages of others allowed him to relate and be viewed as “one of them,” rather than “different.”
Noah also started a lunch delivery business in high school to move among all groups and be accepted. He became known as the “tuck-shop” guy, the tuck shop being the food cart where students bought lunch. These entrepreneurial skills endeared him to his fellow classmates. He expanded his business to selling pirated CDs, finding a prowess for sales and his niche in the social sphere. Noah’s success at these business ventures would carry him through life after high school. There were no jobs available for young black men, and after meeting a friend who lived in one of the poorest and most volatile black townships, he spent the next three years engaged in a life of petty crime.
Noah was never weak or felt sorry for himself. His mother’s strength and mission to give him a better life gave him confidence and made him inquisitive about the world. Patricia inundated his early life with books and excursions into wider society, preparing him for a world that would one day accept him.
His relationship with Patricia was loving but volatile. Noah was a rambunctious child who got into trouble frequently. He would run wild and shoplift. He pulled pranks at school and had a penchant for fire. His actions would cause him to burn down a house and, later, land himself in jail. Patricia was a fierce disciplinarian, trying to raise her child to be a good man so he wouldn’t fall victim to a world stacked against him. Despite these disputes, they were always a team.
But a man named Abel would change all of that. Patricia met and married Abel after apartheid ended but still during Noah’s childhood. At first, Abel was a kind and charismatic man, but his alcoholism and temper would change him into an abuser. He started to beat both Patricia and Noah, and no one, not even the police, could stop him. It would take all of Noah’s adolescent life and some of his early adult years before Patricia would find the strength to leave Abel, but by this time, the damage had been done. Noah, unable to live in the toxic environment any longer and angry at Patricia for staying with this man, separated himself and became estranged. He wouldn’t reunite with his family for years, until Abel’s rage had grown to such fierce heights that he attacked Patricia in front of her new family and shot her twice, including once in the head.
Noah and Robert lost touch when he was 13, mostly owing to Abel’s disapproval of the relationship. A decade passed before Noah finally tracked his father down and reunited. All of the doubt and distance Noah felt about his father disappeared the first time he saw Robert again. By now, Noah’s career had taken off, and Robert had been following his son’s progression the whole time. He was proud of who Noah had become.
More than just a memoir, Born a Crime is also part history lesson, part social commentary about one of the most significant examples of institutionalized racism in history. The origins of colonial intrusion in South Africa and the lasting effects of greed, power, and oppression are paired with anecdotes both from Noah’s life and life in general. These anecdotes explore not only the illegitimacy of apartheid, but also the manner in which it created suffering and long-term detriment in the lives of black citizens.
For example, the high unemployment rate for blacks post-apartheid relates to the inability of employers to afford regular wages once the massive pool of slave-laborers were given rights. Furthermore, because of the lacking educational system geared toward blacks during apartheid and the illegality of work beyond manual labor or domestic service, blacks had few skills and little knowledge to take into the new world. Without knowledge or resources, many were unemployable and unable to change their circumstances.
Noah describes apartheid from an insider’s perspective, finding connections in his life that relate directly to the legacy of the laws. He was fortunate to have been able to change his circumstances and become a successful, financially independent person. He credits his mother for educating him and never forcing him to limit his life based on race. He credits the help of friends and family for supporting him when he was in trouble and providing the resources he needed to make something of his life. He knows that without resources and a support system, he would have had no options beyond the fate of most black South Africans: a life of poverty and survival.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racism in South Africa. It began in 1948 and lasted for 46 years. The laws delineated different rights to citizens based on race, with the white race reigning supreme.
Apartheid was efficiently executed. It first developed as a result of colonial intrusion, which started in the mid-17th century. The Dutch arrived first and established a trading post in what would become Cape Town. They warred with the native blacks to attain power and instituted laws to enforce it, including enslaving them.
When British missionaries arrived, they displaced the Dutch to remote areas inland. Slavery was legally dissolved, but the practice remained. The British needed people to mine discovered gold and diamond supplies. After some time, the missionaries left South Africa, and the Dutch moved back in and reclaimed power.
By that time, the Dutch had developed their own culture and language, calling themselves Afrikaners, a tribe of white Africans. They wanted a way to maintain control over the expansive black population, so they created a new set of laws, which became apartheid. These laws were based on research conducted on other forms of legal racism around the world.
The newfound intricate system of oppression comprised 3,000 pages. Blacks were to have no rights and be constantly monitored and controlled. At its core, apartheid was like a combination of the Indian massacres, slavery, and Jim Crow in America.
All people were required to register as a specific race with the government. This registration determined what rights you had and where you lived. Land became parceled based on race to keep people separated from one another.
Apartheid was also used to breed separation within the black community. These efforts kept the black population, almost five times larger than the white population, in a state of disunity to create a contentious environment.
Before apartheid, blacks lived within different tribes, each with their own language; the two largest tribes were the Zulu and Xhosa. The pre-apartheid history of these tribes was volatile. When the Dutch came, the Zulu, known as fighters, engaged in savage battles, whereas the Xhosa, known to be more rational, tried to embrace the change and find an intellectual solution. Neither tribe was successful, and each blamed the other’s tactics for hindering their success.
During apartheid, these sentiments remained, but there was a common enemy in the white oppressors. However, when apartheid ended, that common enemy disappeared. The deeply ingrained rage and resentment were then turned toward each other. Both the Zulu and Xhosa, as well as other tribes, fought for supremacy in the new democracy. The result was further separation, creating an environment of violence, rather than one of unity and rebuilding.
The ending of apartheid signaled the beginning of what became known as the Bloodless Revolution. The streets ran heavy with the blood of black South Africans, but almost no white blood was shed. In their fight for supremacy, an uprising of the Zulu and Xhosa, under the guise of official party organizations, created a war. There were riots and fighting in the streets. Thousands died, and bodies blanketed the ground.
When apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela was freed, Trevor Noah was five years old. He was too young to understand the implications and celebrations. All he understood was that the happiness of the blacks came with a heavy dose of violence.
He and his mother, Patricia, would often drive through their community of Eden Park amidst fires and rioters in the streets. Most of their neighbors hid from the violence, but not Patricia. She had a life to lead, and she wasn’t about to allow the violence to get in her way. Patricia was stubborn, brazen, and brave, qualities Noah admired in his mother. On one Sunday morning when Noah was nine, he would find out just how fierce his mother was.
Patricia was a devout Christian and believed in the power of God to take care of her. Because of these beliefs, Noah and his mother went to three different churches every Sunday. The three churches had congregations with different racial make-ups and provided different religious experiences. Noah came to refer to them as mixed church, white church, and black church.
It was on one of these Sundays when Noah’s mother threw him out of a moving vehicle to save him from a violent encounter. Here’s how the story began. Patricia owned a used VW Beetle that broke down constantly. That morning was no different. Without a car, Noah, Patricia, and his infant brother, Andrew, were required to take a minibus.
Minibuses had become popular during apartheid as a homemade solution to the lack of government-provided public transportation for blacks. Different tribes operated the minibuses, which created turf wars for business.
The bus Noah and his family took home that night was driven by a Zulu man, the natural enemy to his mother’s Xhosa heritage. It is worth noting that within the Zulu tribe, Xhosa women were stereotyped as being promiscuous and wild. The driver, recognizing Patricia as Xhosa, became verbally aggressive, lecturing her about having children by different fathers (Andrew’s father was black, Noah’s white, and their different skin tones made it apparent).
Patricia argued with the driver, telling him to mind his own business. In response, the driver decided to teach her a lesson. He hit the accelerator and took off, refusing to stop—essentially kidnapping them. Patricia tried to reason with the driver, but she knew it was futile. The tensions between the two tribes were too significant. Violence was likely and could include assault or even death.
Patricia told Noah to get ready to jump at the next intersection, when the driver was forced to slow down. Noah, being exhausted from the day of traipsing from church to church, had fallen asleep. So, when the next stop came and he didn’t react, Patricia opened the door and threw him out, following behind with Andrew wrapped tightly against her chest.
Noah awoke with the pain of hitting the pavement, and Patricia landed in a way that shielded Andrew from the impact. She jumped up and yelled for them to run, and they ran until they were safe. Noah was incredulous that she’d thrown him out of a moving vehicle. But he came to realize how close they’d come to being casualties of the tribal war. Patricia’s strength and bravery had saved his life.
This is the world in which Trevor Noah grew up.
Noah’s birth was a crime under the laws of apartheid. Blacks and other races were not allowed to have relations with whites, and vice versa. The narrative under which apartheid existed was that blacks were fundamentally inferior and whites had no desire to engage with them, hence the segregation. Therefore, a child born as a product of racial mixing served to debunk the theories upholding apartheid. Because of this, a mixed child became a symbol of treason.
The government made the no-relations law the priority, strictly enforcing it through secret surveillance tactics. The punishment for interracial relations was five years in prison. However, often the white partner would be given a mere warning, whereas the black partner would be jailed or charged with rape if he was male.
A mixed child was not a new phenomenon during apartheid. In fact, there were plenty of mixed-race people by the time apartheid started. These people had historically been classified as a separate race: colored.
The history of the colored race extends to the origins of South Africa. The Khoisan were the original tribe in South Africa, similar to Native Americans. When the colonials first came, along with the land, they ravaged the Khoisan women. Those women gave birth to mixed children as a result.
Other slaves were brought in from surrounding regions and procreated with the Khoisan people, further decreasing the bloodline. The original tribe was becoming extinct, either through war and slaughter or inter-tribe relations.
The combination of generations of people descending from the Khoisan created a race of diverse heritages and racial make-ups. Because many were descendants of white men, they tended toward white culture.
Most coloreds speak Afrikaans and don’t know other African languages. Almost all aspects of the colored culture come from the Dutch Afrikaners.
The plight of the colored race during apartheid is a messy one. The government didn’t know how to classify colored people. To mitigate this, coloreds were granted second-class status, what was colloquially considered “almost white.” They had more privileges than blacks but not as many as whites. They were caught in the middle, teetering on the cusp of an almost-full life.
Patricia knew having a mixed child was a crime, but she saw it as her way of resisting the unjust laws.
Many aspects of Patricia’s life at that time were illegal. During apartheid, there were few jobs available for blacks. Men worked as manual laborers on farms, in factories, or in mines, and women worked in factories or as domestic workers. But Patricia was never one to conform.
As a young woman living in the township of Soweto with her family, she took a typing course. Skilled jobs or executive positions were reserved for whites, making her efforts seem futile. But the government, under pressure from international communities regarding the unjust nature of apartheid, rolled back the restrictions on labor in the 1980s. White business owners could now hire “diversity hires,” or the token black person, in clerical positions low on the corporate ladder. Patricia was able to find secretarial work for a large pharmaceutical company located in a suburb of the rich white area of Johannesburg.
It was forbidden for blacks to live in Johannesburg. All blacks had been relocated to townships developed by the government, places close enough to white towns that laborers could get to their menial jobs but far enough away to remain segregated. But Patricia had grown tired of life in Soweto. So, one day, she packed what little belongings she had and moved to Johannesburg. She was 22.
Patricia had to find a way to live in a city that forbade it. At first, she slept in public restrooms. Then, she met a few Xhosa prostitutes who helped her learn how to live in the city. The women helped Patricia disguise herself as a maid so she could walk around undetected. They helped her meet white men who were willing to rent apartments to black women for a price, which was often not monetary. Fortunately, Patricia made enough from her job to pay rent and didn’t have to barter with her body.
She was often caught and arrested. Black maids were forced to carry documentation validating their labor status and right to move around the city, which other laborers were not allowed to do. Patricia didn’t have this documentation, but she always had money to pay the fine. She would be released from jail and go back to doing the same thing.
Patricia’s apartment was in a culturally active, artistic community called Hillbrow. This location was more liberal and home to whites who disapproved of or didn’t care about apartheid. One of these people was a Swiss-German named Robert.
The threat of police was always close in this neighborhood. Neighbors were encouraged to spy on one another. Women who dated the white men in the apartments might turn a black woman in, especially a prostitute. Some blacks were even employed by the government to spy on other blacks.
At any point, Patricia could have been turned in to the police or suspected of being a spy, which had other consequences. Her ability to trust the people was small, but Robert lived on her floor and seemed trustworthy. He was quiet, reserved, and uninterested in the laws of apartheid.
Robert was almost twice Patricia’s age, and their relationship was more friendship than lovers. Still, one night, she propositioned him about having a child. Not only was having Robert’s baby a form of resistance for Patricia, it was also advantageous. She wanted a baby, not a marriage, and Robert said he didn’t want a child. Also, because it was illegal, he could have no legal claim to the baby. He said no many times before finally conceding.
On February 20, 1984, Patricia gave birth to Noah. She told the doctors the father was from a different country to explain Noah’s complexion. Despite their dubiousness, the doctors accepted her story because they had to fulfill the requirements of race and nationality on the birth certificate. On Noah’s birth certificate, there is no one listed as his father and his nationality simply says “another country.”
Before Noah was born, Patricia found a new apartment in an adjacent neighborhood. She thought this would ensure her freedom from Robert’s involvement. But when Robert saw her afterward and Noah wasn’t with her, he realized he couldn’t have a child and not be involved. The period that followed would become one of dire secrecy for both Patricia and Robert.
Because Robert couldn’t be seen with Noah in public—a white man with a mixed son would raise too many questions—Patricia would take Noah to a park, and Robert would join them at a safe distance. This worked most of the time, but once, Noah noticed his father and ran toward him, yelling “Daddy! Daddy!” Other people started to look, and Robert tried to run away. Noah chased him, thinking it was a game of tag.
Soon, Noah could only visit Robert at his home, which was safest for everyone. It was equally dangerous for Patricia to be seen with a mixed child. As a baby, she could wrap him up in a swaddle to hide him, but as Noah grew bigger, hiding him became problematic.
She found a solution. Patricia acted as if Noah was a colored child, meaning he had colored parents, which wasn’t illegal. She sent him to a colored daycare and found a colored woman in her building who agreed to pretend to be Noah’s mother when they went out. Patricia would act as the maid. If Patricia had to take Noah out alone, she’d have to pretend he wasn’t hers if any police were around.
After Noah was born, three years after her departure, Patricia took him to Soweto to meet her family. Noah started staying at his grandmother’s house for weeks at a time and during holidays. But even though Soweto was a black township, being mixed was still a problem.
Police in Soweto wore riot gear on the streets. They were more like a military presence, and they watched for malfeasance more closely. Because of this police presence, Noah was never allowed outside the confines of his grandmother’s walls for fear of being seen. If he was caught, the police could send him to an orphanage in the colored district. His family could be deported or thrown in prison. He had to be smuggled in and out of the house.
Never one to sit still long, or follow rules, Noah dug a hole in the yard one day and ran off. His family searched for him frantically. He had no idea what sort of trouble he could have caused.
Most of Noah’s memories of growing up during apartheid are indoor memories. He didn’t have any friends because he couldn’t play with the other kids. But he was good at being alone. He lived inside of books or his imagination. To this day, Noah has to remind himself to be social and not get too comfortable alone.
As a celebrity, Noah travels often and meets other mixed South African adults around his age. Their stories all start out similarly. Their parents met in Hillbrow or Cape Town and lived secretly in an apartment. The difference is that most of them were taken away to grow up in exile with the white parent.
When Noah first heard these stories, he couldn’t believe his ears. He had no idea leaving had been an option. When he asked his mother why they didn’t leave, she responded, “This is my country. Why should I leave?”
Much of Noah’s life existed in a world where women ruled. The house in Soweto was all women: his aunt, whose husband lived there but was inconsequential; his grandmother; and his great-grandmother, Koko. Koko was frail and blind. She would sit by the stove all day and take in the activities. She was alert and mentally sound, but she couldn’t see or move around. Noah had a hard time thinking of her as a person because she seemed more like a statue who sometimes spoke.
Growing up with women was not unique to Noah’s life. Apartheid took his father because he was white, but the other black kids were often without fathers, too. Apartheid had taken their fathers to labor jobs far away or prison. Some fathers were in exile fighting against the laws.
The space that would typically be occupied by men was replaced with religion. Life for his family and all other women in the neighborhood centered around faith. They held daily prayer meetings at each other’s homes. His grandmother hosted the meetings on Tuesday nights.
Noah loved these nights because he loved to sing the hymns and pray. His grandmother told Noah his prayers were the most powerful because he prayed in English, the language of God. She always asked him to pray for everyone in the group, and Noah took pride in his ability to reach God and help others.
The belief in the power of Noah’s prayers created a sticky situation for Noah one night.
In Soweto, every citizen had been given a tiny parcel of land and meager supplies to build a dwelling. Most started with a shack. Then, after saving up a little money, they might add a room or a garage.
Noah’s grandmother’s house had reached that level, with two rooms total. The kitchen was in one room, and everyone slept in the other. But there was no indoor plumbing, and six or seven houses shared an outhouse, which was really just a seat over a hole in the ground. They used newspaper as toilet paper.
Noah never enjoyed this arrangement, especially when he had serious business to do in the bathroom, because it was hot and infested with flies. So, one day, when everyone was out of the house, Noah came up with what he thought was a brilliant plan to make going number two more enjoyable: Noah spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and did his business.
It was only after beginning that he realized Koko was in her spot. She could smell it but couldn’t see him, and Noah tried to stay quiet so she couldn’t hear him. In a panic, knowing the type of beating he would get if his mother found out, he rolled up the paper and shoved it deep into the trash can.
What young Noah failed to realize was that the smell would permeate the house. When his mother and family returned, they discovered the package in the trash and freaked out. They believed they had been the victims of witchcraft and needed to rid the house of evil. This meant calling an emergency prayer meeting.
It should be noted that even though his family was deeply religious, they were like most black South Africans. Most had adapted to the colonial religion of Christianity, but many also held on to older traditional beliefs of their tribal cultures. These beliefs included what is commonly known as “black magic,” or witchcraft, shamans, and the like. These beliefs run so deep, people have been tried for witchcraft in the courts as recently as the last decade.
The seriousness of this symbol of nefariousness in his grandmother’s home was immense. Noah was immediately called upon to use his special prayers to rid the house of the offending presence. Noah was at a loss. He believed his prayers were powerful. If he prayed for God to remove this evil presence, and he was the presence, what would God do to him? If he refused to pray, how would he explain it?
There was no way around it, so Noah mumbled some vague prayers about evil spirits. He included a few about forgiveness and the fact that maybe it was a misunderstanding. After the women were satisfied that the evil was vanquished from the home, Noah secretly prayed to God to forgive him for lying and wasting God’s time.
Being mixed in a black family was basically the same as being white for Noah. He wasn’t punished by his grandmother like his black cousins were. He was treated more leniently, being let off for bad behavior that was much worse than what his cousins were being beaten for.
Growing up this way helped him understand why whites are quick to hold onto their privilege. He never argued with his special treatment. He would rather allow his cousins to be punished for his misdeeds than take the beatings himself.
But as a small child, Noah didn’t understand that his skin color was the cause of the special treatment. He thought of color as types of chocolate, just different flavors of the same thing. His flavor was simply the combination of dark and white chocolate. He was milk chocolate. When other blacks referred to him as white or treated him as such, he just thought they didn’t know much about colors. He thought his special treatment was specific to who he was. It was a “Trevor” thing, not a “race” thing.
His lack of understanding was compounded by the fact that there were no other people who looked like him as a point of reference. In Soweto, with a population of nearly one million people, Noah was the only mixed person for miles. In fact, after apartheid ended and he could venture outdoors, his grandmother’s neighbors started using him as a landmark: “Take a right at the light-skinned boy.”
Kids would point at him like a spectacle. Some tried to feel what his skin felt like. Others ran away from him. The other children had rarely seen a white person and didn’t know the difference. They didn’t have TV, never left the township, and police didn’t count.
Another way apartheid created discord in the black community was through language. There were many tribes and languages spoken in Soweto. During apartheid, members of certain tribes were only allowed to learn that tribe’s language. Zulu kids learned Zulu, Xhosa kids Xhosa, and so on. Therefore, different groups of blacks believed they were different because they spoke different languages.
Speaking a different language than someone makes you an outsider. In contrast, speaking the same language makes them see you as being “one of us.” Therefore, in a world where skin color is meant to separate people, language can be used to bring people together.
Noah understood that language signified identity and community. As he grew older and realized the color of his skin would always make him different, Noah saw language as his only avenue for fitting in. He was inspired by the way languages had helped his mother move through the world and manage difficult situations. For instance, when a white store clerk told a security guard in Afrikaans to follow Patricia and make sure she didn’t steal, Patricia turned and, in perfect Afrikaans, told the clerk to follow her to show her where to find what she needed.
Noah learned many languages. He spoke English as his first language because his mother wanted him to have a leg up in society. He spoke Xhosa because that was his home language. He spoke Afrikaans because Patricia believed in knowing the language of your oppressor. He spoke other languages his mother had picked up as a way to survive. He spoke German because of his father.
He started using language like his mother did. When he would get suspicious looks or find himself the target of unwanted attention, speaking whatever language the other people spoke helped him assuage the conflicts. One time, a group of kids behind him was plotting to rob the “white” kid. Noah turned and spoke their language, saying they should rob someone else together. The kids laughed and apologized for not knowing he was one of them.
When apartheid ended, all-white schools opened their doors to other races. Through his mother’s job, Noah was able to attend a private, elite Catholic school with kids who were black, white, Indian, and colored. There was no sense of segregation. They wore uniforms, had the same classes and teachers, and every social group comprised different races.
But this existence was unrealistic. In this environment, he was sheltered from the realities of race in the real world. Noah wasn’t treated differently, so he didn’t know to feel different. His mother never forced one race or another on him, so Noah never had to choose what race he was. He never set limits on who he could be or what he should be doing based on race. But in the real world, choosing sides was required, and he was about to learn which side he would choose.
After sixth grade, Noah changed schools, going to a government school instead. He was required to take an aptitude test and scored well enough to be placed in the advanced class. On his first day, Noah saw that all but four of the thirty kids in his class, including him, were white. This fact, in itself, was not particularly significant. But when it was time for recess, he understood how race worked in his new school.
Once outside, he saw that there were, in fact, a lot of black kids in the school. He also noticed that the social breakdowns followed the racial divides. White kids played together. Black kids played together. And there Noah was, in the middle with no group. It was the first time he realized that people could occupy the same space and not be together.
An Indian kid from his class took pity on Noah and befriended him. When this kid found out Noah spoke several languages, he took him around to the various black groups and had him speak, like a parlor trick.
The black kids couldn’t believe Noah spoke their languages. They weren’t used to white or colored people knowing African languages because they were seen as inferior to English or Afrikaans. The black students wanted to know how he knew their languages, and Noah said it was because he was black—he had only ever been raised around black people. The black kids disagreed, but his knowledge of their languages made them believe he was okay.
Noah realized where he belonged: with the black students. He asked the school counselor to be transferred from the advanced class to the regular class. The school tried to dissuade him, assuring him that the black kids were going to hinder his progress. He didn’t care. He wanted to be with people he understood, even if it meant being held back.
After that day, Noah identified as black because he saw that he was culturally black. The world saw him as a colored or mixed person, but with the black kids, he could just be himself, the only person he knew how to be.
Before apartheid, blacks were educated by the British missionaries, who wanted to Westernize the natives. Later, many of these people became leaders in the anti-apartheid movement because they were intelligent and well-educated.
However, during apartheid, the Afrikaners didn’t want blacks to be educated. They created separate educational systems called Bantu schools, in which the teachers were barely educated themselves. These schools didn’t teach science, history, or social studies. Blacks were taught only enough math to understand how to count during farm labor and other trade knowledge. Often, these lessons were taught like nursery rhymes, even to the older students.
More than just ensuring that blacks would not be able to think and organize, the Afrikaners claimed there was no reason to educate a black person. Knowledge would not be needed in their lives. Former missionary schools were forced to change or close. Many chose the latter.
But Patricia would make sure Noah would not suffer this fate. Properly educating him in knowledge and life experience became her priority.
Patricia, like Noah, never felt a true sense of belonging growing up. When she had Noah, she did so with a desire to love someone who would love her back. Someone who belonged to her.
She was a troublemaker as a child, already stubborn, and rebellious. Her mother didn’t think Patricia acted like a girl should act.
As neither the eldest daughter nor a son who would carry on the family name, she wasn’t significant in her family structure. She and her mother were always at odds, but she loved her father. Her father was named Temperance, which was contrary to his gregarious personality. He was eccentric and flashy, but later, they discovered he was actually bipolar. He lived with a second family, and when he’d visit, Patricia would follow him on his manic escapades.
When Patricia was nine, she requested to live with her father. Her mother complied, but instead of taking her in, her father sent her to live with his sister in Transkei, the Xhosa homeland. She wouldn’t reunite with any of them for 12 years.
At her aunt’s house, she lived with 14 cousins in a hut, all from different parents. They were also children whose parents didn’t want them around or couldn’t afford them.
In Transkei, so little land had been allocated by the government, the residents were crammed in. There was no water or electricity. The land was overrun and the soil infertile. Money was scarce, so most families subsisted through low-level farming.
Patricia was only taken in to help work the fields. There was barely enough food for all the children to eat. When they did have food, she had to fight the others for it. When they didn’t, she would steal food from the animals: whatever scraps she could scrounge. Sometimes, she ate dirt just to feel something in her stomach.
The only saving grace in Transkei was the still-operational missionary school, where Patricia was able to learn English. She learned to read and write, and when she was old enough, she went to work in a factory close by. As compensation, she received a meal. To Patricia, it was the best meal of her life because she’d earned it and didn’t have to rely on anyone else.
When her aunt became sick, Patricia went back to Soweto and enrolled in the secretarial school that would change her life. She was 21. Her move to Johannesburg a year later was to escape what she called the “black tax,” or the destiny of poor blacks who have to make up for the past degradation of their families. She knew that if she stayed in Soweto, she’d never make it anywhere, no matter how hard she tried, because she’d always be stuck trying to bring everyone in her family out of poverty.
Noah only heard of his mother’s life in Transkei in small doses. Patricia wanted Noah to understand how hard she’d fought so he’d never take their life for granted. She didn’t complain or hold grudges. She left the past behind and promised Noah he would have a different life.
Her first step in this direction was the name she chose for him. Xhosa names carry meanings that often lead to the owner fulfilling that destiny. For instance, Patricia’s Xhosa name was “Nombuyiselo,” which means “she who gives back.” She was always helping others, giving her money or energy away for others’ benefit. As a child, she’d collected bottles and used the money to feed the abandoned neighborhood children. “Trevor,” in contrast, had no meaning. He was free to become whatever and whoever he wanted.
Patricia read to Noah constantly. She read from the Bible and books from white donations. She signed up for a series of books on how to be a better person and bought a set of used encyclopedias. Trevor learned to love reading and treated his books like prized possessions. When he was old enough, he started buying his own books, mostly fantasy novels.
Noah was raised to be knowledgeable and strong of mind, but more than providing nourishment for his brain, Patricia did her best to provide nourishment for his body, as well. Patricia never spent money on anything but food and books.
Her spendthrift ways were heroic, but despite always making sure there was food, the food was not always the best. They often sucked the marrow out of bones or ate “sawdust,” the minuscule remnants of meat from the butchershop. Butchers swept the remnants into a bag for the dogs, but Patricia would buy it. Sometimes, she’d even take the bones the butcher put out for the dogs and boil them. When Noah became famous and was introduced to the delicacy of bone marrow in a fancy restaurant, he saw them as just dog bones.
Apartheid wasn’t over the moment the laws were abolished. It took time for the laws to completely disappear. But blacks were still free to live less-restricted lives, and Patricia moved them from their illegal apartment in the city to a colored neighborhood called Eden Park, where she bought a house.
Eden Park was a completely new world for Noah. He’d never seen a colored area before and had never been around colored people. He was unused to paved streets and suburban life, and he didn’t like having his own room. He was used to sleeping surrounded by others, so he often slept in his mother’s room.
Patricia was also able to buy a car and bought the orange VW Beetle. The poor functioning of that car would later become the catalyst for many horrific aspects of Patricia’s life beyond the minibus experience. But at that time, when the car did run, they were truly free for the first time.
Noah and Patricia were like two partners on an expedition, forging into a new world. At six, Noah learned to drive on a stretch of desolate road. They’d fly down hills and back up the other side at great speeds, like a rollercoaster. They ventured into the world, exploring parts of the city and country where they didn’t have to spend money. She’d take Noah on picnics of baloney and butter on brown bread, eating while admiring the landscape. That sandwich is still a favorite of his to this day.
As impoverished as they were, Noah never felt poor because of the life experiences she opened him up to. Patricia raised him in a world where limitations were invisible, or as Noah put it, how a white kid might be raised. In their world, everything was possible, and his voice and ideas were important. She showed him that there were dreams beyond the confines of his race and culture.
Of all the amazing things his mother did, the most astonishing was having Noah when she did. There was no reason to believe that apartheid was coming to an end. Noah was 10 before democracy completely took over. Patricia had prepared him for a world that might never exist, and when democracy became a reality, he was ahead of the curve.
Many people would tell her she was crazy and ask why she was wasting all this time teaching her son about the world. Each time, Patricia would counter with, “Even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world.”
Like many children, Noah was self-centered and focused only on what was in front of him and benefited him. He had an immense appetite, consuming food, books, anything he could get his hands on, and always wanted more. He never stopped to consider the sort of strain this might put on his mother.
Patricia used to send him to their relatives with a bag of vegetables and cornmeal to make up for the amount of food he would consume. He became the family garbage disposal, cleaning everyone’s plates after a meal.
Noah was also rambunctious and hyperactive, always on the move and running with abandon. His babysitters often left in tears. He wasn’t mean or cruel; rather, he was quite polite and well-mannered when it was called for. But he had boundless energy and a large ego.
Patricia used to take him to the park and run him to wear him down. Later, when he was able to go to white parks, he realized that was how people treated their dogs. But wearing him down was necessary; otherwise, he was causing trouble.
Noah enjoyed being naughty and pulling pranks on others. Sometimes, he’d even pull pranks on his whole school. Once, he removed all the magnifying glasses from the classroom projectors. Another time, he sprayed the entire contents of a fire extinguisher in the school piano so it would explode with foam when played at an assembly.
Yet, his favorite forms of mischief involved knives and fire. His mother once bought a bunch of fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day, and he emptied the contents into a pile. But he accidentally ignited the pile with one of the other fireworks and burned off his eyebrows and part of his hair.
The view from the outside was that Noah was mischievous, destructive, and wild. However, Noah says he did what he did because he liked to create and experiment. His motivation was a desire to see what reaction his actions could create, not to destroy.
Because of his behavior, Noah and his mother had a relationship akin to a detective and their target in films: a bitter rivalry but a high regard for each other’s prowess. When he was a kid, she could simply outsmart him or catch him easily for a beating. But as he got older, stronger, and more energetic, she had to come up with more savvy tactics to curb his antics.
One day, when they were shopping for groceries, Noah started nagging his mother to buy him a toffee apple. He followed her around the store begging and begging. Patricia ignored his whining until she was finished shopping. She finally told him to grab a toffee apple and meet her at the checkout line. Noah came back and set the apple on the counter, proudly telling the cashier to add it to his mother’s purchases.
Because Noah and his mother were so different in color, the cashier assumed they weren’t together. He told Noah to wait his turn. But Noah protested, saying Patricia was going to buy it. Patricia looked at him like he was a stranger and told the cashier that this poor colored boy must have lost his mother. She paid for her groceries and left the store. Noah, dumbfounded, ran after her in tears. When they met at the car, she had a good laugh.
The older Noah got, the more he could match Patricia’s wits. To be able to make her points without his retorts, she took to writing him letters. He would respond in kind. This process could go on for days for minor disputes. But for his more severe misdeeds, Patricia would turn to physical discipline—that is, if she could catch him.
Despite her strict and aggressive discipline, Noah knew it was out of love. She always made sure he understood why he was being punished. Afterward, she’d let him sulk, then treat him with her normal kindness to bring things back into balance. Her punishments were momentary lessons, not acts of frustration or hate.
Noah’s love of knives and fire would change his life in two distinct ways. In one instance, he was expelled from Catholic school for bringing a knife for protection against bullies. This wasn’t Noah’s first offense, however. Noah was frequently disciplined in Catholic school. They’d wash out his mouth with soap when he swore, and if needed, the principal would deliver a spanking.
During one of these spankings, he started laughing because it was so weak compared to his mother’s. This event led to the school requiring him to get tested by a psychologist for the first of three times. Each time, the psychologist always came back with the same response: there’s nothing wrong with him. The consensus was that he was simply creative and clever.
Noah didn’t care about being expelled. His mother taught him to question authority, and he did so eagerly. He saw Catholic school as a microcosm of apartheid: strictly enforced rules and authority based on conjecture.
The other event had lasting effects. Patricia had started dating Abel, one of the mechanics who always worked on the orange Beetle. A black man, Abel lived in a garage/guest cottage in the backyard of a white family’s home. The white family had a black maid, who had a son that Noah played with when they went to visit.
Noah had become fascinated with burning his name into wood with a magnifying glass. One afternoon, when he was seven, he was showing the boy how to do it in the servants’ quarters, which was really a shed out back. When he and the boy went to get a snack, Noah left the glass and a book of matches on the straw mattress inside.
Unfortunately, neither boy realized the door locked from the inside, and they couldn’t get back in. A fire started, which demolished the shed and burned down the main house. Noah was too young and his mother too poor for any legal recourse, but the family kicked Abel out. With nowhere to live, Abel moved in with them at Eden Park.
After they moved into the house in Eden Park, Patricia brought home two black cats she got from a woman at work. Noah had never had pets and was excited, and Patricia loved animals. Although Patricia was well aware that black people hated cats, believing they were witches, she thought things might be different in a colored neighborhood. She was wrong.
One day, she and Noah came home to find the cats strung up and mutilated, with the Afrikaan word for witch written on the front wall. Noah took it in stride, seeing how the cats never became affectionate with him. But when they replaced the cats with two dogs, he was excited. They named the dogs Fufi and Panther.
Panther took to Patricia and Fufi to Noah. Panther was bright, but Fufi was not. (They didn’t realize Fufi was deaf until after she was killed by a burglar and the doctor told them.)
Noah loved Fufi more than anything. He trained her, slept with her, and taught her tricks. Fufi could jump so high, she could jump above his head. Noah and Patricia started coming home to Fufi waiting outside the gate of their house. They never understood how she got out.
Then, Noah stayed home from school one day and discovered Fufi’s secret. Fufi would wait until they had left, then jump to the top of the five-foot wall and scramble over. Noah followed Fufi and saw her jump the wall into another yard. When he asked the boy who lived there if he could get his dog from the yard, the boy said Fufi was his dog. Noah tried to call to Fufi, but she couldn’t hear him and didn’t know her name. Of course, Noah didn’t know this.
Noah was heartbroken that Fufi ignored his pleas, but he was especially upset to see her with another boy. When Patricia got home, he cried and told her the whole story. Patricia took Noah to the house to get Fufi back, but the mother lied and said Fufi was theirs. Even after Patricia showed her a picture and brought Panther along as proof, the woman wouldn’t give Fufi back. The situation got heated until Patricia offered to pay them 100 rand.
Noah couldn’t stop crying about Fufi’s disloyalty. Patricia told him it didn’t matter that Fufi loved another boy. She was still his dog, and that’s all that mattered.
Noah calls this incident his first heartbreak, but he learned a valuable lesson. He learned that Fufi wasn’t cheating on him; she was just living a full life. At the end of the day, she always came home when it was time. He had thought of Fufi as his dog, but he understood that Fufi was just a dog who loved him and lived in his house.
This understanding would shape how he thought of relationships for the rest of his life. He knows that people in love do not own each other, and he has avoided falling into despair, as many of his friends have as adults. Whenever a friend is dealing with jealousy or betrayal, Noah comforts them and tells them the story of Fufi.
There is so much Noah doesn’t know about his father, even now. He doesn’t know anything about Robert’s extended family or what his life was like before Patricia. What he does know is that his father was a chef in Canada and New York, then opened some bars and restaurants in South Africa, but that’s it. But thanks to Patricia’s insistence, he’s been able to learn a little about Robert as a person.
When Noah was 24, Patricia encouraged him to find Robert. Noah hadn’t seen him for 10 years and never thought he would again. Noah didn’t see the big deal. He’d grown up, started his career, and was happy. But she said it was important for Noah to show Robert who he’d become and learn about him. She didn’t want Noah going through life believing his father didn’t care about him, something that may not be true.
Noah attributes his father’s private nature to his parents’ ability to get away with a mixed child during apartheid. Where Patricia was feisty, Robert was reserved. Noah believes he is the confluence of both.
Robert hated racism and homogeneity of any kind. This feeling wasn’t one of moral superiority, but rather a lack of understanding about why apartheid existed. Robert couldn’t rationalize why white people would come to Africa if they didn’t like black people. Therefore, because the laws were illogical, he never lived by them.
Robert opened the first integrated restaurants in Johannesburg during apartheid through a special license to serve black people. The licenses were distributed by the government out of necessity. Visiting black dignitaries and tourists from other countries were not subject to the laws of apartheid, so they had to make special cases to accommodate them. Black South Africans with money exploited this loophole by frequenting establishments with licenses.
The restaurant was a success. White people were curious about black people, and black people were curious about what the white people were curious about. This common intrigue outweighed the boundaries they were supposed to uphold. But some white people didn’t like these subversive establishments, and they petitioned to have Robert’s restaurant shut down.
At first, the inspectors tried to shut down the restaurant for health violations, but Robert, like most Swiss-Germans, was anything but unclean. Then, they mandated he have a separate toilet for each race of patron. This was an impossible task, and Robert wouldn’t comply. Eventually, he chose to close the restaurant, rather than pander to the government.
When apartheid ended, Robert moved to a newly segregated and eclectic area called Yeoville. No longer fearing prison, he could now take Noah to play in the nearby park with kids from various races. He and Noah would meet every Sunday afternoon at his house, which was great news for Noah, who got to skip black church.
Noah would celebrate his birthday with Robert each year, and Christmas as well. Noah loved Christmas with Robert because it was European Christmas, with a tree, fake snow, stockings, and presents from Santa Claus. On the contrary, African Christmas was only church, then a nice meal. A present in African Christmas was always just clothes and never from Santa. No African was going to give Santa credit for a present bought with hard-earned money.
When Noah visited, Robert would cook his favorite meal: a German dish called Rösti, a potato pancake with gravy. Robert was a quiet person, and many afternoons were spent without talking. But he was a good father, always attentive, affectionate, and generous.
Noah likens his time with his father to a web series. A bit of information would be doled out a few minutes each time, and he’d have to wait until the next week to find out more.
When Noah was 13, he lost his connection to Robert. Distance had already grown in their relationship for a couple of reasons: one, Noah was a typical teenager who didn’t want to spend time with his parents, and two, Abel, Patricia’s then-husband, didn’t approve of her being in touch with her ex. Abel’s temper was enough to keep them home.
Noah’s visits with Robert slowed to every other week, then once a month, then to whenever Patricia and Noah could secretly slip away. The sneaking around during apartheid was back, but this time the oppressive ruler was her abusive husband.
Robert eventually moved to Cape Town. There’d been a white flight from Yeoville when other races started moving in, and many of Robert’s close friends were among those who fled. Noah didn’t think much about Robert’s move. He never thought it would end their relationship.
Noah became preoccupied with school, shenanigans, learning how to be an adult, and then starting his career as a comedian. But thoughts of his father lived in his subconscious. He wondered where Robert was, how he was, whether he thought about Noah or knew anything about who he’d become.
Without any contact, it became easy for Noah to come to his own conclusions. He assumed Robert didn’t care about him and had moved on with his own life. Only Patricia’s constant kind words about Robert kept those thoughts at bay. She always reminded Noah that Robert chose to be in his life when it was safer for him not to be.
When Noah tried to find Robert after Patricia’s encouragement, he didn’t have much to go on. Robert was so private, there was almost no information about him.
Noah wrote to the Swiss embassy, but they wouldn’t help him because Robert was not listed on his birth certificate as his father. He finally convinced the embassy to send Robert a letter from him. After a few months, Noah received a letter back. He made a plan to go to Cape Town.
The visit with Robert after so long was awkward. Noah felt like he was meeting a man he knew but didn’t really know. He had vague memories of Robert and could recall few details about his mannerisms and voice. But after arriving, they were back into their old routine.
Robert had all of Noah’s favorite foods from the last time he saw him, when Noah was 13. He also brought out a photo album containing every clip from Noah’s career right up to that very week. He’d been following Noah’s career and was proud of him.
At that moment, Noah felt the gap between them disappear. He knew Robert had always been his father, even if when wasn’t there. Noah felt proud, chosen, and wanted.
Noah wanted to make up for all the time that had passed. On his next visit, he started asking Robert question after question, like an interview. But he realized a list of questions was not the way to forge an emotional bond. Apartheid had stolen years of their being together, and only time together could make up for it.
The two had dinner and talked about the news, watched TV, and listened to Elvis Presley records in the yard. Robert asked Noah if he’d learned anything new about him, to which Noah responded he’d learned how secretive Robert was. Robert smiled and said Noah was getting to know him already.
Noah was a boy without an island, so to speak. He was mixed, which made him appear to be colored. But because the colored race was a cultural distinction more than a representation of a specific race, Noah didn’t belong with them either.
There was also a lot of tension between blacks and coloreds. As stated, coloreds were treated as “almost white” in the eyes of the law. But a colored person could rise to the status of white during their lifetime if they started to show white traits. Their hair might become straighter or skin lighter. The decision to reclassify involved a number of factors, and some would have to undergo the “pencil test.” A pencil would be placed in their hair. If the pencil fell out, they were white. If not, they were colored.
The government made sure colored people were aware of the reason they couldn’t have full rights. There was a fear that some blacks would pretend to be colored to skirt the system. Thus, blacks were to blame for the fate of the colored. The most damning thing you could call a colored person was “bushman” because it drew attention to their black heritage.
All of these factors created problems for Noah with colored people in Eden Park. He looked like them, but he was culturally black. Some colored people considered him a disgrace for adapting to the inferior black race. Others thought him a snob because he had a white father and spoke English, not Afrikaans. There was no middle. He couldn’t win.
Despite Eden Park being a colored community, Noah says his time there was the hardest of his childhood. He wrote, “It is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider.”
Eden Park was a lonely place for Noah. He had no friends and was bullied often. He was so desperate for friends, he often walked into a bully’s trap willingly, thinking their kindness was sincere. He became used to the bullying and didn’t let it bother him, but the day at the mulberry tree pushed him over the edge.
There was a large mulberry tree in Eden Park that, like anywhere with a mulberry tree, the children frequently gleaned fruit from. Noah was one of these kids, but he always picked the berries alone. One day, a group of older colored boys came to the tree while he was playing. The leader of the pack pretended to be friendly, asking Noah to see his pile of berries. Hoping this kid wanted to be his friend, Noah showed the berries to him. The older boy knocked the berries to the ground. Noah didn’t react and went back to picking.
Then, the other kids started throwing berries at him, including unripened ones that were hard like pebbles. Noah got scared and ran home covered in berry juice and crying. He told his mother what had happened, but Patricia was so relieved he hadn’t been seriously hurt, she didn’t make much of it. However, when Abel got home, everything changed.
Abel was friendly with Noah. He acted like a big brother and played with him. Still, Noah knew Abel had a temper. It would be a few years before Abel started to abuse Noah and his mother, but he’d witnessed Abel’s rage at minor infractions, like being cut off while driving. Abel had also been drinking that night, which made him more volatile.
Noah usually didn’t want anything to do with Abel when he was drunk, but in that moment, he wanted revenge. He knew if he turned Abel’s rage toward the bullies, he could get back at them.
Abel and Noah drove to the tree. When they pulled up, the bullies scattered. Abel caught the leader, grabbed a switch from the tree, and beat him. At first, Noah was happy to see the boy get what was coming to him. But soon, it became clear that Abel wasn’t punishing the boy. He was simply an adult beating up a child.
The bully was terrified. Noah’s joy turned to empathy when he saw the fear in the boy’s eyes. He realized the bully was just another boy who’d become caught up in the convoluted system of race in South Africa. He’d been wrong to unleash Abel on him. He felt terrible.
Noah started eighth grade at Sandringham High School, a school mixed with different races and run like a charter school in America. The school was large and represented every race of South Africa, serving as a sort of model of how the country at large could or should be.
Despite the diverse student body, Noah found himself again on the outside of the different groups. The cliques, more often than not, comprised mostly one race. However, this breakdown had more to do with class structure, geography, and activity interests than race. Kids from the suburbs hung out with other kids from the suburbs, and the same was true for kids from townships. Athletes hung out with athletes, computer enthusiasts the same, and so on. Certain social classes or races of students were more likely to play certain sports or have interests in certain clubs.
Noah didn’t fit into any of these groups. He mostly hung out with the poor black students, but he never got to see them outside of school. He didn’t ride their buses to the townships and couldn’t hang out with them on weekends because Patricia never had enough money for gas. Whenever school was not in session, Noah was alone.
Noah’s family didn’t live close to the school, so his walk was long, which meant he was always late and, consequently, getting detention. During each day’s assembly, his name was always on the detention list announced to the student body. He was so famous as the detention kid that when his name wasn’t announced one day, everyone cheered.
After the assembly was lunch, and most everyone got snacks and food from the tuck shop, a market stand. Noah was a fast runner, and he’d always be the first to make it to the tuck shop. Being first in line was a big deal. The sooner you were able to get food, the sooner you could eat, and the rest of the lunch break would be free time. There was also the chance that the tuck shop would run out of food.
Seeing that Noah was always at the front of the line, kids started asking him to buy food for them, even offering to give him part of the change in exchange. Noah recognized the economic opportunity in front of him and became the “tuck-shop guy.”
He started taking orders at the assembly. He started doing so much business, he had to turn people away. Eventually, he started accepting only five orders a day, offering his services to the highest bidders. Soon, Noah was making enough money to buy his lunch with his profits and keep the money from his mom as petty cash.
Noah found it easy to maneuver among the different groups as the tuck-shop guy. His presence was non-threatening and non-intrusive. He blended in, popping in long enough to participate in whatever each group was discussing or playing, maybe tell a few jokes, then move on.
The other kids accepted these intrusions because Noah provided a service they wanted. He was still an outsider, but at least he wasn’t an outcast anymore.
For a period of time, Noah and his family were more or less homeless. They’d left Eden Park, and everything they had went into helping Abel build his mechanic business. But after a while, Patricia bought a run-down house in a white suburban neighborhood called Highland North.
Highland North was mostly working-class or middle-class Jews. As the only black kid there, Noah once again stood out.
Making friends in this neighborhood was even harder than in Eden Park because of how the neighborhood was designed. Fear of blacks during apartheid had caused most white families to build tall walls around their houses with electric wire on top. Everyone was isolated from each other, and Noah could often ride his bike through the neighborhood and never see a kid.
Noah soon found that the best way to make friends in the white neighborhood was to befriend the children of the help. Servants who lived in backyard quarters of their white employees could keep their children with them. These kids became Noah’s only friends.
One of these friends was a boy named Teddy, who went to Noah’s high school. Teddy’s mother was a domestic worker in a white neighborhood a few miles away.
Noah and Teddy were fast friends and became inseparable. Teddy also had a penchant for mischief, and Noah finally felt normal for the first time. Together, they walked all over Johannesburg getting into trouble.
One of their frequent excursions was to the local mall on Friday and Saturday nights. They’d wander around because they couldn’t afford to buy anything. The mall had a movie theater and would stay open late, even after the stores were closed.
One night, Teddy and Noah discovered they could stick their arms through the gate of one of the stores and steal chocolates filled with alcohol. Stealing these chocolates became the routine. For weeks, they’d reach in, grab some chocolates, drink the contents, and go back for more.
One night, a security guard caught Noah with his arm through the gate. Both boys took off running, and a chase ensued through the mall and into the parking lot. Noah was scared but exhilarated. But after he and Teddy busted through the lot and into Noah’s neighborhood, he stopped being afraid. Having no friends and spending all that time alone, Noah had wandered every inch of his neighborhood. He knew where the best hiding spots and shortcuts were.
One of these shortcuts was a small hole in a fence at the end of a dead-end road. Not many people knew about it. Noah headed toward the dead end, calling for Teddy to follow. But this wasn’t Teddy’s neighborhood, and he thought going into the dead-end would leave them trapped. Teddy went a different direction, and Noah snuck through the hole and lost the cops.
When Noah got home, he waited for Teddy to show up, but he never did. He went to Teddy’s house. Teddy wasn’t there. Teddy wasn’t at school on Monday either.
Teddy’s parents finally came over to Noah’s house and told him and Patricia that Teddy had been arrested for shoplifting. Patricia knew right away that Noah was somehow involved. But Teddy had covered for Noah and said he wasn’t with him. Noah thought he was safe.
The next day at school, Noah was called into the principal’s office, where police officers and mall security were waiting. Teddy had been arrested and expelled, and they asked Noah if he knew who Teddy had been with that night. Noah denied any knowledge, but when they pulled out the security feed, he thought he was cooked.
The video was black and white and showed Noah and Teddy reaching through the gate and running through the mall. The security officers froze the video on a picture of Noah and Teddy at the entrance. Noah swallowed, seeing his likeness smack dab in the middle of the screen. What he didn’t expect was to be questioned about who the other guy with Teddy was.
Because of the black and white footage, Noah’s skin looked washed out compared with Teddy’s dark skin. The cops were looking for a white kid. Noah couldn’t believe it. How could they not suspect him? He was Teddy’s best friend. He was a known troublemaker. The math was good.
Noah saw how the construct of black versus white built during apartheid had blinded all of them to the fact that the person in the video could be mixed. At one point, Noah almost confessed just to stop feeling so inconsequential. But he didn’t. He got away with it.
Patricia frequently talked to Noah about women. But her comments were always about grown-up relationships. She taught him what it meant to be a man and how to respect a woman. But she never taught him how to navigate puberty and girls his own age. Noah would have to learn those lessons on his own.
After he moved from Catholic school to the government school, Noah found himself on the cusp of Valentine’s Day having no idea what it was. Catholic schools didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. When he found out what Valentine’s Day was, he thought it was bizarre. But he still wanted to be part of it.
His friend suggested Noah make a girl named Maylene his valentine. Maylene was colored, the only colored girl in the school. She and Noah looked the same, so people thought they should be together.
Noah already knew Maylene. When he still lived in Eden Park, they had walked home together from school. But Patricia and Abel had gotten married and had a son, Andrew. They’d moved out of their old neighborhood.
Noah liked Maylene, not romantically, but he thought she was smart and cute. If his friend hadn’t suggested her as a valentine, the thought never would have occurred to him. But Noah was motivated by his friend’s assurance that Maylene liked him, something he’d never experienced, so he asked how to make it happen.
Noah got a crash course in the mating rituals of adolescents. It was the typical “have your friends talk to her friends and work it out” scenario. Her friends gave his friends the green light, and Noah asked Maylene out after school one day. She said yes and gave him his first kiss.
Noah was over the moon. Not only did he have a valentine, but he had his first girlfriend. He wanted to make Valentine’s Day special. He saved his money and bought flowers, a card, and a stuffed bear. He even wrote a poem in the card using Maylene’s name. When the anticipated day came, Noah took his gifts and waited for Maylene to come out of class.
Standing alone in the hallway, Noah watched other couples exchanging gifts and becoming giddy with the spirit of the day. There was no sign of Maylene, but still, he waited.
When Maylene finally appeared, she told Noah she’d found a different valentine and was that guy’s girlfriend now. She still took the gifts. Noah didn’t know what to think. He assumed this was normal behavior. Also, the other kid was white, popular, and attractive.
Even though he was hurt, Noah had to admit the situation made sense. That day, he realized the good-looking guys would always get the girls, and he wasn’t one of them.
Noah didn’t age gracefully during adolescence. He had such severe acne over his face and neck, it was considered a medical condition. He was too poor to afford a haircut and wore a large, unruly Afro. He was also growing so fast, Patricia was constantly having to buy him new clothes. Sick of this waste of money, she started buying his clothes a couple of sizes too big so he would grow into them. He was tall, gangly, and had big feet. Needless to say, he was not in demand by the ladies.
After the lessons learned from the Maylene debacle, Noah accepted his fate as the funny, unattractive guy. He didn’t try to ask girls out because he figured there was no point. He also didn’t want to upset the balance of his burgeoning business. His role as tuck-shop guy worked because he was nobody to everybody.
During his freshman year, Noah met a girl who made him rethink his entire position on dating. He was friends with a girl named Johanna, whom he’d gone to school with off and on over the years. Johanna was popular and beautiful, but her best friend, Zaheera, was gorgeous. Noah had a huge crush on her. Although Noah knew he wasn’t dating material, he was good friend material and knew how to make girls laugh.
He devised a plan. He would become best friends with Zaheera. He would become so close to her that by senior year, he could ask her to the matric dance, or the South African version of prom. It was a three-year plan.
One day, Noah got up the courage to ask for Zaheera’s phone number. He was surprised she gave it to him and even more surprised when they started talking frequently on the phone, sometimes for an hour or more. They were also hanging out more at school. The plan was working better than expected.
Noah was adamant that he wasn’t going to tell Zaheera how he felt. They were getting closer, and he didn’t want to screw things up. Plus, Zaheera was in an on-again, off-again relationship with a popular boy named Gary. Noah was content to bide his time as the dutiful friend through the whole thing.
After the holiday break freshman year, Noah returned to school, but Zaheera wasn’t there. When he asked Johanna where she was, he learned Zaheera’s family had emigrated to America for her father’s work over the break.
But that wasn’t all he found out. Johanna told him that Zaheera’d had a huge crush on Noah and was waiting for him to make a move. Noah was heartbroken that she was gone. More so, he was ashamed of how he’d never had the courage to tell her how he felt. All the times he could have said something, and now he would never get the chance.
When apartheid fell, a focus became making sure all blacks felt represented in the new democracy. To ensure no one felt left out, the new government made all of the major languages official languages in South Africa. There are eleven.
With so many languages, communicating became a daily struggle. No one knew other languages beyond what was picked up here and there, such as at parties where three or four languages were spoken and quick translations were made. Somehow, the people made it work and could get by. But sometimes, they couldn’t.
Noah was a straight-up businessman near the end of high school. No longer just the tuck-shop guy, he now sold pirated CDs as part of his enterprise. With this new addition to his business brought the need to expand his footprint. He hired two other kids, Tom and Bongani, to help him sell the CDs.
The matric dance was on the horizon, but Noah still hadn’t made much headway with girls by his senior year. He still wasn’t cool or an insider, and he assumed he wouldn’t be going to the dance, or at least not with a date.
When Tom found out Noah didn’t have a date to the prom, he came up with a solution. Tom said if Noah gave him more of the CD profits and some free music for himself, he would find Noah a gorgeous date. Noah agreed, thinking nothing would come of it.
Then, one day, Tom showed up and said he’d found the most beautiful girl Noah had ever seen. He took Noah into the city to meet her. Still, Noah was dubious.
Tom was also the son of a domestic worker but went to a different school than Noah. Tom sold Noah’s CDs at this other school. Tom was a born salesman. He was charismatic and could talk anyone into anything. Noah saw the extent of this ability when Tom took him to a township talent show.
The township was called Hammanskraal, a black settlement in the middle of nowhere. The only nice thing Noah owned were a pair of Timberland boots, the same kind made popular by American hip-hop artists. Tom told Noah to make sure to wear his boots, and Noah complied.
When they arrived at the show, the host announced that a well-known American rapper, Spliff Star, who worked with Busta Rhymes, was going to perform. Noah couldn’t believe it. What was an American rap star doing in the ghetto?
As Noah looked around, he noticed that everyone was looking at him. It turned out that Tom had told everyone he could bring Spliff Star to the talent show, but it would cost them. The organizers had paid him upfront, and now Tom wanted Noah, in his boots, to play the part.
Noah initially refused, but eventually, Tom convinced him to go on stage. It was ridiculous. Tom beat-boxed while Noah faked his way through a few Busta Rhymes’ songs. It was a terrible performance, but the crowd went wild, believing it was the best thing they’d ever experienced.
This was the kind of guy Tom was. So, when he and Noah arrived at the future prom date’s house, it came as no surprise that Tom had skin in the game. Tom was setting Noah up with this girl as a way to have a chance with the sister.
Noah forgot all about Tom’s duplicitous ways when the girl, Babiki, showed up. She had light skin and beautiful eyes and was the most beautiful girl Noah had ever seen. There was no one like Babiki at his school.
Noah didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t used to talking to beautiful women. The saving grace was that Babiki was also shy and said little except “hi” and “bye.” Noah couldn’t believe his luck. He’d never thought he would ever go on a date. Now he was taking this stunner to the dance for everyone to see, and she was just as nervous as he was.
During the weeks leading up to the dance, Tom and Noah continued to visit Babiki in the city. He learned her family was Pedi, a smaller South African tribe. The Pedi were known to be poor, but they had a tendency toward scraping up whatever money they could to buy expensive clothes. Babiki was no different; she was a fashionista.
Noah and Babiki never went out alone. They didn’t talk much owing to her bashfulness and his nerves. But they enjoyed themselves with the group, and she would always hug him and sometimes kiss him goodbye.
The dance was approaching, and Noah kicked into high gear to get everything ready. He wanted the night to be as perfect as Babiki was beautiful. For that to happen, he needed a car, dress clothes, and a haircut.
Abel offered to let Noah take one of the used cars from his garage, which was now located in their backyard. Noah was grateful, but what he really wanted was to take Abel’s BMW. He told Abel he needed a nice car because Babiki was no ordinary girl.
Abel made him a deal. If Babiki really was as beautiful as Noah said, he could take the BMW. Tom and Noah brought Babiki to Noah’s house and introduced her to Abel. Abel and Babiki chatted for a while, and then they took her back home. When Noah got back, Abel said the BMW was Noah’s to take.
With the car lined up, Noah turned his attention to his outfit. He knew he needed to look good, but he had no idea what good fashion was. He’d become accustomed to wearing a brand of sweat clothes called Powerhouse. He owned five of the same pants and sweatshirt ensembles in different colors. But Powerhouse would not cut it on prom night.
Bongani, Noah’s other employee, took it upon himself to give Noah a makeover. Noah, in love with American movies, wanted a long leather coat like Neo in The Matrix. But Bongani steered him toward a similar black leather coat that was more realistic. Paired with a nice sweater, pants, and suede shoes, Noah’s outfit was complete.
The last thing to handle was Noah’s immense unkempt Afro. Bongani took him to a black salon in the township where he lived. Noah decided to cornrow his hair, but he had to relax it first. The chemicals used to straighten black hair are harsh and toxic. But because Noah had never had it done or seen it done, he didn’t know how powerful they could be.
The stylist told him to let her know when the relaxer started to burn so she could wash it out. Noah wanted his hair to be perfect, so he withstood the first burning sensations. But soon, his scalp was on fire. He’d waited too long, and the chemicals had burned parts of his scalp.
Still, when the process was over, he liked the way his hair looked straight and combed back. He felt like a pimp. Six-hours later, his hair was cornrowed. Noah was floored by what he saw. He never thought he had a chance with girls, so he never thought to put any effort into his appearance. For the first time, he liked what he saw in the mirror.
When the night of the dance came, Noah was ready. Everything was perfect. But when he went to get Abel’s BMW, things took a turn for the worst, and they kept turning.
Noah and Tom found Abel drunk. He didn’t remember the dance, and he said if they wanted the car, they had to buy him beer first. After they came back with the beer, Abel still wouldn’t let Noah take the BMW. Noah pleaded for 30 minutes before giving up and taking a used red Mazda.
After wasting all that time with Abel, Noah was an hour late to pick up Babiki. She looked even more beautiful in her dress, but she was furious. She didn’t say a word to Noah. Unfortunately, her mood worsened after Noah got lost on the way to the dance, which was being held at a location off campus. Noah drove around the unfamiliar neighborhood for an hour before finding the venue.
When they finally arrived, Babiki refused to get out of the car. Noah tried to apologize and coax her out, but she only responded with “No.” Desperate, Noah ran inside to find Bongani. When Bongani came outside to help, he was taken aback by how beautiful she was. Rather than helping Noah, he ran back inside to tell the others.
Within minutes, the car was surrounded by a group of boys all vying for a look at Babiki. No one could believe she had come with Noah. All Noah could think about was how he’d spent all of high school trying to avoid embarrassing himself, and here he was, humiliated the first time he had a date.
Bongani was trying to help talk Babiki out of the car. Suddenly, he stopped and walked over to Noah. He wanted to know if Noah knew Babiki didn’t speak English. Noah didn’t believe Bongani. He walked to the car and said something to Babiki in English. The blank stare he got in return was all the evidence he needed.
Noah’s mind raced back through their time together since they’d met. It suddenly dawned on him that he and Babiki had never talked when they hung out. He hadn’t realized it because he was shy and she was shy. She always spoke Pedi, which was one of the few languages he didn’t speak.
One of the reasons he never noticed their lack of communication was that Babiki’s sisters spoke English. He was always able to pick up the gist of what was being said through their translations. And that was just how his mind worked. He knew many languages, but his mind always translated what he heard into English. Therefore, when he thought back on conversations, he remembered them in English.
He also remembered seeing her speak to Abel, but Abel spoke Pedi. He hadn’t been paying enough attention and just assumed they were speaking English. At the end of the day, the only English Noah could remember her saying were greetings and salutations.
He was mortified. Here, he thought he’d had his first girlfriend ever for more than a month, and they’d never had a proper conversation.
In a panic, Noah ran inside the dance looking for someone who spoke Pedi, but he didn’t find anyone. Babiki never got out of the car. Those few minutes inside were the only part of the dance Noah got to attend.
Noah stayed in the lot until the dance was over, then drove her home in silence. When they got to her home, he tried to find some way to relay how sorry he was. But Babiki leaned over and kissed him. After she said “Bye” and left, all Noah could think was that he didn’t understand women at all.
Before Noah expanded his own enterprise to include pirated CDs, he sold them for a white student two years older named Andrew. The two met after Noah overheard Andrew complaining about being ripped off by the black students. The black students would buy items on credit and never pay. He was too afraid to collect.
Noah offered to partner up and manage the black students for a fee. Around this time, Noah also convinced Patricia to buy him a computer for school work. At first, he just wanted to play video games. But Andrew was a whiz at computers, and he helped Noah improve his with more memory and features and taught him how to download music.
Noah worked for Andrew for a year. When it came time for Andrew to graduate, he gave Noah his CD burner to keep the business going. Suddenly, Noah had everything he needed to go into business by himself.
Noah was a natural at the bootleg game. He was good at selling and had a product that was a hot commodity. CD burners were expensive and uncommon, so Noah had a monopoly on the pirated-CD market.
Part of what helped Noah’s business was that he catered to everyone’s tastes. He still didn’t know about popular music because it wasn’t allowed in the house, and he didn’t listen to music when he was downloading it. He was able to amass a large variety of music without bias.
One day, Noah’s employee Bongani gave him the idea of making CDs with only the best tracks of different albums, rather than whole albums. So, Noah started selling mixed CDs, which was a boon for business. Bongani had another idea: make the tracks fade in and out so the momentum of the beat wasn’t lost between songs. Again, Noah listened, and his party mixes were a hit.
Noah was making hand over fist with these new products. At one point, he was making 500 rand a week, which is more than some domestic workers still make today. For the first time, Noah was financially independent.
Noah was living the dream, and he had Andrew to thank for it. Andrew’s generosity made Noah see the world through a different lens. He saw how important it was for marginalized communities to be given the proper resources in life after they’ve struggled for so long. Because Andrew was white, he’d been afforded more resources and opportunities. But how could the poor be expected to change their circumstances when they aren’t given the proper tools?
People saw providing resources to the needy as a handout, but Noah understood that a resource was nothing without ingenuity and hard work. Noah had the tools he needed, but a CD burner alone wouldn’t have made him a success. It takes both money and ingenuity to change your life. Someone may have one, but without the other, success is unlikely.
Bongani was from a small ghetto named Alexandra, a black area left over from pre-apartheid. It is known as Gomorrah for its wild parties and rampant crime.
The township of Alexandra was once a white-owned farm. It was a place where black squatters lived when coming to find work in the city before apartheid. The white owner had sold plots of land to some of the black tenants before apartheid made it illegal for blacks to own land. Whereas in other similar areas, blacks were moved out and the land was turned into white suburbs, the blacks in Alexandra refused to give up their land.
The government built wealthy white neighborhoods around Alexandra, but the residents still wouldn’t leave. Unlike Soweto, where there was room for the town to expand after apartheid, Alexandra was boxed in. It was a dense, rundown area with shacks squeezed in like sardines.
When Bongani asked Noah if he wanted to go to the hood the summer after high school, Noah wasn’t sure. He’d only been to Alexandra a few times, and never at night. During apartheid, the hoods were the places no one wanted to be from. You were supposed to be ashamed of being from a township.
But as apartheid ended, American gangster rap and hip-hop were growing in popularity. Suddenly, thanks to films and music about South Central LA, the hood was increasing in its status. South African kids in the townships took this street cred and started owning it with pride. All of this made Noah intrigued, so he went with Bongani.
Noah had never experienced any place like it. There was a constant hum of human commotion. People were everywhere, walking around, hanging on the corners, or hustling this or that. The town was mostly cinder block and iron. There was no sanitation, so people were always burning garbage. Noah thought it was overwhelming. But he also saw there was structure amid the pandemonium. Certain streets held higher social clout than others.
Bongani lived on the other side of the river that ran through town in the only area the government had paid any attention to. There were actual houses on this side, and people fared a little better financially than in the more run-down areas. If you had a little money in the hood, people would say you were a “cheese boy” because cheese was so expensive. Bongani and his friends were all known as cheese boys.
That first day, Noah and Bongani walked to his house and sat on the wall by the yard. At the time, Noah had no idea he’d spend the next three years doing nothing but that.
Alexandra was home to amazing street parties. All one had to do was put up a tent in the street, and the party was on. Most of the parties went late into the night and only ended after violence erupted.
These parties would always have a DJ. Because most DJs were spinning vinyl, they had a limited supply of music, which translated into a finite amount of time to play. But Noah had several hours of downloaded music on his computer. The mixing software he used for his party CDs created the effect of a DJ spinning. Bongani convinced Noah to become a live DJ.
His first performance as a DJ was New Year’s Eve the summer after high school. Noah had moved into his own apartment in Highland North, and he and Bongani carted his whole computer system, tower and all, on a minibus to Alexandra. They set it up outside Bongani’s house, and word spread fast about the mixed guy DJing from a computer. The party was legendary, and the duo started booking more gigs.
DJing wasn’t just fun, it was something to do and a way to make money. During apartheid, all the jobs were low-paying slave labor jobs. Post-apartheid, employees were required to be paid minimum wage, and all that close-to-free labor went away. People were laid off because employers couldn’t afford the cost of labor. There were no jobs in South Africa for blacks, and no one would hire blacks from the hood.
Unemployment, especially for young black men, increased by approximately 50%. With no money and no jobs, there wasn’t much for Noah and his crew to do but chill in the hood.
Bongani already had a crew he hung out with on the corner, and Noah joined them. Most of the time, they’d listen to music and dance, but the crew also helped Noah with his business. After Noah discovered a chink in the chain of his business, he turned the crew into a dance troupe.
The problem was, Noah had access to so much music that other people couldn’t get. Sometimes, people wouldn’t know the songs he played. If they didn’t know the songs, they didn’t know how to dance to them. So, when Noah would DJ, the dance crew would put on a show, demonstrating the latest moves to the latest tracks. Of these dancers, the best one was a kid named Hitler.
Dancing was a big deal in the townships. Crews from other hoods would bring their best dancers to compete with each other. It was a cultural phenomenon. Hitler almost always won his competitions
Noah and his crew started building routines that showcased Hitler’s moves. The other guys would get the crowd going, then Hitler would jump in the middle and break it down. Everyone would circle around and shout “Go Hitler, Go Hitler” while bumping the beat with their arms in the air, palms down.
With the dance crew, Noah’s popularity soared. They were getting hired for all sorts of events, even in the suburbs and by white people.
Noah and his crew were invited to perform as part of a cultural appreciation day organized by the mother of a friend. The event was held at a Jewish school in a wealthy suburb and was meant to bring different cultures together. There was a variety of cultures represented through song and dance.
When it was time for Noah’s crew, called the Hip Hop Pantsula Dancers--the South African B-Boys, Noah set up his system in front of an audience of almost all Jewish children in yarmulkes. He got the audience warmed up, and everyone started to cheer. As usual, the crew came out and started dancing. The audience loved it, and everyone started dancing, including the adults. Then it was time for Hitler’s spotlight.
Noah shouted out Hitler’s name, and Hitler jumped into the middle and started getting down. The rest of the crew circled around him and did what they always did; they started chanting “Go Hitler” with their hands pumping the air. In an instant, the whole room stopped dancing and stared with gaping mouths. Noah and the crew didn’t know what was going on, so they kept chanting.
The problem was that Noah and his crew didn’t know the extent of who Hitler’s namesake was or what he’d done. The name itself is not uncommon in South Africa, which stems from the process used by black people when choosing their children’s names.
Most black people had a traditional name from their tribe, one that is meaningful and hopefully prophetic. But blacks were also required by law to have an English or European name. These names were usually random selections from popular names heard in the news or from the Bible or the name of a celebrity.
To confound the issue was the lack of education blacks received during apartheid. The nursery rhymes of the Bantu schools didn’t cover much ground. Further, whites didn’t communicate with the black community, so blacks had no understanding of what was happening in the white world.
For many blacks in South Africa, what they heard on the news was all they knew of the war. From what they could tell, WWII involved a powerful man named Hitler who was responsible for the fighting. Even in Noah’s school, which had a higher standard than most, the facts of the war were taught with a similar level of superficiality as the facts of apartheid.
Apartheid is taught much like slavery is in America: surface-level, at best. Slavery happened, then Jim Crow, then MLK Jr., now it’s over. Likewise, South African students learn that apartheid was bad, Nelson Mandela was released, and now it’s over. All anyone learned about WWII in school was Hitler invaded countries and people fought. End of story.
Noah suspects the appalling aspects of Hitler’s regime hit too close to home. Not wanting to draw any attention to the injustice of apartheid, South African curriculum glossed over both.
What black South Africans did understand was that, at some point, blacks were recruited to fight alongside the whites to defeat Hitler. To blacks, the fact that the white people were desperate enough to ask black people for help said a lot about how powerful Hitler was. if you want a powerful child, give him a powerful name, or the name of someone powerful. This was the origin of the name “Hitler” in South Africa.
Because of this lack of knowledge, Noah and his crew were perplexed when a teacher from the Jewish school disconnected their system. She admonished them severely for their behavior. Noah thought she was upset about an erotic dance move popular in African culture. He took offense and fought back.
The miscommunication continued, and in response to Noah’s defense, she called Noah and his crew disgusting. Noah assumed she was racist and told her black people were free now and had the right to live as they wanted. All he saw was a white person telling them black culture was disgusting. All she saw was a group of anti-semites saying they were free to do what they wanted.
When Noah’s crew left the venue, they didn’t walk out. They danced out. They made a defiant exit, pumping their fists and shouting go Hitler as a show of solidarity and pride.
Life in the hood is one of survival for most people. The need to survive often leads to many shades of illegal activity. The lines between good and bad become blurred.
Even if a person wasn’t outright stealing, likely they were buying something from someone else that was originally stolen one, two, or three exchanges before. It could be as simple as a mother buying a box of canned goods that “fell” off a delivery truck to feed her hungry children. Crime is just a part of life.
Everyone grew up together in the hood and knew each other. Even the gangsters were members of the community. Everyone in the hood looked out for each other. An example of this close-knit community is the mom code. There was an unspoken rule that if a mom asked you to do something, you did it, gangster or not.
Noah’s career as a criminal had originally started with the pirated CDs. But he never thought what he was doing was a crime. If you weren’t supposed to download music and burn CDs, why would they make it possible?
He and his crew were doing good business with the CDs and DJing gigs. Minibus drivers were their best customers. Because of the competition among them, the drivers were always looking for new music. They’d drive by Bongani’s corner, place an order, complete their route, and come back to pick up the CD.
Bongani, always the visionary, saw how they could extend their hustle. He posited that a series of minor deals could create a scenario in which the deals stacked up to lead to the biggest score. They started small, such as allowing the minibus drivers to pay for CDs on credit. The drivers would take the CDs and promise to pay at the end of the week. The boys would attach a small interest rate to the debt.
This venture started bringing extra cash, a commodity in the hood. People always needed needed cash in Alexandra. Bongani realized they could give people small loans for a bill or food and add a little interest on the backend. Once they started doing this, they were doubling, then tripling their money.
The business expanded beyond loans. Noah and Bongani started using cash as a way to barter and make more money. In the hood, someone was always selling something on the corner, and there was always someone trying to buy whatever was being sold. The duo started looking for ways to position themselves as the middlemen.
For example, they might come upon a man caught in a negotiation over a DVD player a drug addict was selling. Bongani would find out the price the addict wanted. He would then take the man aside and ask how much he had to spend. The addict might want 140 rand, but the man only had 120. Knowing the addict was desperate, Bongani would buy the player for 50 rand, then give it to the man on credit, adding 20 rand as interest. When the man was able to pay the 140, their profit was 90 rand. Sometimes, they could push the deal farther. If the man worked at a shoe store, they might allow him to pay his debt with a new pair of Nikes. They’d sell the Nikes to a cheese boy for 200 rand, a 100-rand discount off the store cost. A 50-rand investment turned into a 150-rand profit.
This was the hustle Bongani and Noah came to perfect. None of it was legal (most of the items were stolen), but none of it felt like it was a crime. No one asked where anything came from. Everyone assumed the items came from white people, who had insurance.
Noah never expected their CD and DJ business to turn into a loan service and pawnshop, but every day was more of the same. At the height of their business, they had amassed around 10,000 rand. Noah had picked up knowledge of how to make spreadsheets and keep books from his mother, and he kept every aspect of the business organized on his computer.
Noah felt accepted in the hood in a way he never had before.
All of Noah and his crew’s success came crashing down at a party in a black middle-class neighborhood one night. The cops were called because of a noise complaint. Because of the slow technology, Noah couldn’t get the system shut down fast enough, and one of the cops shot his computer.
Noah lost his hard drive of music, meaning no more DJing and no more CDs. Business was over, but they still had the hustle and some money. However, it didn’t take long for the money to dry up. Soon, they had next to nothing.
A short while after that, a man who worked at the airport and frequently stole items from people’s luggage came by with a digital camera. Noah and his crew snatched it up to flip for a profit. The camera was full of pictures from a white family’s vacation. When Noah saw the photos, they changed him.
In all of his time as a low-level criminal, he never thought about the people who had originally owned whatever they were hustling. Without any knowledge of the victim, he could always rationalize his actions. But seeing the faces of that family made him see the people he was affecting. He cherished his family photos, and he felt terrible that this family’s memories had been stolen. It was just plain wrong.
This concept of not seeing who you hurt is the foundation the hood is built on. Apartheid moved blacks to townships so white people wouldn’t have to see how they lived and be reminded of what was happening to them. If they had to acknowledge black people as human beings trying to survive, slavery would be incomprehensible. It’s easier to do things that hurt others if you never have to see who those others are.
Noah and his crew were invited to a dance-off in Soweto one night. The whole crew took the minibus to watch Hitler compete, but Hitler lost the battle.
It was early morning when they got on the minibus to go home. They hadn’t gotten far outside the township when their bus was pulled over by police. The officers made everyone on the bus stand on the side of the road while they searched it.
One of the cops claimed to have found a gun in the minibus and asked whose it was. When Noah and his friends said they didn’t know, the cop went down the line slapping them in the face and demanding an answer. When he found out they were from Alexandra, he called them gangsters and rapists. He said he was going to arrest them all until one of them confessed about the gun.
Noah understood quickly that this was a shakedown. The cop was looking to make what was called a “spot fine,” or a bribe. But they didn’t have any money, so he took them to jail. There were other people on the minibus, but only the ones from Alexandra were arrested.
Noah called a friend in the morning, and he and his friends were bailed out. But it was a bribe, not bail. They were never formally charged or processed. He and his friends were shaken by the experience. Although they played the parts of hustlers on the streets every day, feeling akin to the gangsters, they weren’t gangsters. They were cheese boys trying to fit in and survive.
Noah realized that his friends had few options. They would either be the lucky ones who found a job, or they would be stuck fronting like tough guys to make it in the hood. But he wasn’t from the hood. He’d been faking it. There was always an out for him at the end of the day, and he’d always known it. He could move on whenever he wanted, something he knew the others couldn’t do. For the others, there was nowhere else for them to go but the hood.
Patricia never liked that Noah hung out in Alexandra. She didn’t have a problem with the people in the hood, just the way of life in the hood. She wanted Noah to be somewhere where progress happened, knowing he was the kind of person who would excel just to make sure others didn’t surpass him.
During his time in Alexandra, Patricia never stopped worrying that he would get arrested and throw his potential away. She told Noah if he ever got arrested, not to call her. He would have to learn his lesson the hard way.
When he and Bongani were still in business, Noah saw an ad for some cell phones on the cheap that they could flip for a nice profit. He needed to drive into Johannesburg, so he took the old Mazda he’d taken to the matric dance from Abel’s garage. This behavior was nothing new. He’d been doing it for years and often got into trouble. But despite his mother’s punishment, he’d do it again.
The car, like many of the cars in Abel’s yard, wasn’t properly registered and didn’t have plates. But Abel kept a stack of old plates around, and Noah took one of those and put it on the car. He was nineteen or twenty and didn’t think twice about it.
He didn’t make it far before he was pulled over in Hillbrow. He knew he was being racially profiled, but he was in an illegal car, so he tried to play it cool. When the cop started asking him questions about the car, he was anything but cool. He froze up.
Being black in South Africa means being used to the law always sniffing around. In that moment, Noah wasn’t afraid of the law as much as he was of what his mother would say when she found out.
It wasn’t until the cop ran the random, expired plates that Noah realized he was in serious trouble. He was handcuffed and arrested for suspicion of driving a stolen car. He was taken in, processed, and fingerprinted.
The situation went from bad to worse when the cops tried to locate the vehicle’s owner. When Noah stole a car from Abel, he always stole the junk cars, never a client’s car. If he’d taken a client’s car, the cops would have found the owner and realized the car was from the shop.
But the Mazda had no clear owner. There was no way for Noah to prove where it came from. To compound this was the rampant nature of violent carjackings in South Africa. They were so rampant, no one was surprised when it had happened to someone they knew.
Many carjackings ended in murder, which made things worse for Noah. Not only was he suspected of stealing the car, but if he had stolen it, he very likely could also have killed someone for it. The cops were all over him.
At any point, Noah could have called home and straightened it all out. Abel would have told the officers that it was a car from his garage, and the whole thing would have been done. But Abel had become abusive by that time, and his fear of what Abel would do outweighed his fear of being in jail.
He also remembered what his mother had said about not helping him if he got arrested. He decided to go it alone—to be a man and take what was coming. He did call his cousin, just so someone knew what was going on.
That first night, one of the officers sat Noah down and told him what he could expect. He would be held in the police jail until his bail hearing. After hearing the case, the judge would either let him go free or set bail. If he could pay, he’d get to go home. If not, he’d have to wait for his trial in prison.
In prison, a person was put in cells with others awaiting trial. The gamut could run from petty criminals to real, hardened gangsters. There was no indication of how long the process would take, and Noah could be stuck in prison for months or longer before even being convicted.
The cop told Noah to request a lawyer instead of going to his bail hearing. The cop wasn’t giving him this information as a kind gesture. He was working with an attorney, getting a cut of the retainer.
Still, Noah did as he was told. He found a lawyer, but now he needed a way to pay the lawyer. He called a friend and asked if he could borrow the money from his father. The next day, the lawyer was paid. Noah felt good about handling his situation alone and finding a lawyer.
Even after he was taken to the holding cell, Noah didn’t think much of it. Then, the cell door slammed shut and the lights went out. His mind started replaying scenes from all the movies he’d watched and all the terrible things that could happen to him.
But no one said anything to him or anyone else. Everyone was afraid. They didn’t want to be outed as weak or vulnerable. For self-preservation, Noah decided to play the part of a tough guy, which was easier than it should have been.
Colored gangs are known throughout the country as some of the most violent and debased. It’s as much of a stereotype as the mafia is in America. Noah assumed everyone would think he was a colored gangster, so he only spoke in slang Afrikaans with a colored accent. The facade wouldn’t have held up in front of real colored gangsters, but it was enough to fool the others.
Noah came to think that jail wasn’t so bad. The food was decent. He got to read magazines. All in all, he found it quite peaceful. He was so comfortable, he actually started to think that he could do prison for a few years. He was that afraid of Patricia and Abel.
After a few days, a large foreboding black man was put in with Noah and the others. Despite days of posturing, everyone feared this man. Noah overheard the man and a police officer trying unsuccessfully to have a conversation. The cop spoke Zulu. The man spoke Tsonga.
Abel was Tsonga, so Noah had picked up the language. He stepped in and translated for the hulk. In response, the man was grateful. The two started chatting, and Noah realized this man was docile despite his size. He had been arrested for mere petty theft of video games.
The man didn’t have a job and needed the money to support his family. His story was similar to that of so many black men in post-apartheid South Africa. During apartheid, he’d been a slave laborer. Despite the oppression, the job had provided structure and a salary, even if it was close to nothing. When apartheid ended, he had no skills or education and became lost in the new open world.
His size and dark color made people afraid of him. But the man was like a snake, more afraid of the world because he didn’t know how to fit in. Petty crime and jail stints became his life because it was all he had.
Meeting this man in jail made Noah see the composition of justice. Your race and class put you on one side of the law. If you have money, you can afford a lawyer. If you have money, you can make things happen in your favor. If you have a support system, you can get help.
If you’re poor, you have no options. If you’re an outsider, you will get lost in the system. This man’s crime was less offensive than Noah’s, but his punishment would be worse because he didn’t have any friends or money. He would have to use a public defender and not be able to understand what was said in the courtroom. His fate was entirely out of his hands.
Noah’s hearing was finally called, and he was taken to the holding cell under the courtroom. The holding cell was where everyone awaiting trial was held. Some were actual prisoners waiting on an appeal or retrial. Others were small-time or white-collar offenders.
This new cell showed Noah the gravity of his situation. The relaxed environment of the police jail was a beach vacation compared to real prison. He saw the difference between real bad guys and guys who do bad things.
A man in the cell was losing it. He rushed Noah and started screaming and crying about the abuse he’d already endured from the gangs in prison, abuse Noah had imagined that first night. This guy wasn’t crazy, though. He was like Noah: educated and well-mannered. He’d been in prison for a year awaiting his trial. Noah became scared for real for the first time.
The cell was divided into racial configurations. Once again, Noah found himself stranded without a home, just as he’d been so many times at school. He couldn’t go over to the colored gangsters, not with his fake bravado. Going to the black group was equally challenging. They might see his mixed skin and reject him. The colored gang might get offended that he chose the black group.
He did the math of each scenario, knowing he would be required to pick a side. He decided the white-collar white men were the least threatening.
Fortunately, Noah was called after only one hour. His lawyer had made a deal with the prosecutor for bail because Noah didn’t have a record. Bail was paid, and he was free to go. When Noah got outside and felt the sun, he knew he never wanted to go back inside.
At Patricia’s house the next day, Noah tried to play it off. He said he’d been crashing with his cousin for a few days. Patricia gave him a look of profound disappointment and hurt. She asked who he thought had taken care of everything while he was in jail. The friend’s father had called her, and she’d paid for the lawyer and bail.
Patricia told Noah she might be hard on him, but it was because she loved him. She said neither the world nor the police loved him. It was better to be punished by her than by them. Her punishment was used to teach him a lesson. Their punishment was used to destroy him.
Noah and his mother had always been a team. They argued, they fought, but there was always love between them, even when Patricia teased him about his looks. For instance, after the matric dance, Noah kept getting his hair relaxed and braided. Patricia teased him about putting so much effort into his appearance. But on Sundays, she’d dress to the nines for church. She’d tease Noah that he wasn’t the prettiest one in the house anymore.
Noah couldn’t help but agree. He saw his mom as a beautiful, strong woman, inside and out. But as he got older, a wedge would form in their relationship. This wedge was named Abel.
After Patricia met Abel at the garage where she took the Beetle, she and Noah would visit him often. Noah was six and didn’t understand adult behavior, but he knew this man was suddenly part of their lives.
Abel was tall, with strong arms and large hands. He was moderately handsome, funny, and charismatic. He always helped whoever was in need. The world knew him as a good man. But at home, he was abusive.
At first, Abel was just Patricia’s cool friend they sometimes hung out with. But after the fire, when Abel moved into their Eden Park home, their lives changed forever.
When Patricia told Noah she was marrying Abel, he tried to talk her out of it. He wasn’t angry or jealous. He just had an inclination that Abel was bad news. Noah had seen Abel’s fury the night at the mulberry tree when he beat up a child, and it hadn’t surprised him a bit. Furthermore, Abel’s name held the answer to his character. His Tsonga name was Ngisaveni, which meant “be afraid.”
After a year of marriage, Patricia gave birth to Andrew. Abel took the family to his parent’s house over Christmas in the Tsonga homeland of Tzaneen. Abel’s family was traditional, believing in stereotypical gender roles, in which women were subservient.
Patricia hated the customs. She didn’t believe in bowing to men (which was something women literally did) and made a mockery out of bowing when called upon.
In Tsonga tradition, the firstborn is cherished, especially a firstborn son, and treated with more reverence than the other children. To Abel, bringing home his firstborn son was a monumental event, and Patricia was supposed to play the dutiful woman. Her refusal to perform the customs were taken as a personal affront. He felt she was disrespecting him, and they argued the whole time. Patricia never went to visit Abel’s family again.
Once Patricia married Abel, she started to lose control of her life. Abel tried to make their family a traditional Tsonga family. He created new rules for the house, such as relegating Fufi and Panther to the yard. He thought going to church all day was disrespectful to him. What kind of wife spends the whole day away from her husband? What would people think?
Abel stopped fixing the Beetle so Patricia couldn’t drive to church. She took minibuses instead, but without the car, Noah wasn’t able to visit his father. Abel refused to drive them, feeling it was insulting for his wife to spend time with her ex. Noah’s relationship with Robert dwindled; then Robert moved to Cape Town.
Abel’s drinking also became a major problem. He was drunk every night by the time he came home from work. Some nights, he didn’t come home at all.
One night, Patricia and Noah awoke to a fire in the kitchen. Abel had come home late and passed out with a pot on a burner. The kitchen was scorched. Patricia woke him up and cursed him for being so irresponsible. Abel didn’t care. He was drunk.
Patricia called her mother and started to complain. Abel came in and disconnected the call, which incensed her more. She started yelling at him about his behavior. After taking it for a minute, Abel smacked her across the face so hard, she went flying. Noah grabbed Andrew and watched the scene from the doorway.
Patricia couldn’t believe it. It was the first time she’d ever been hit by a man. She jumped up and kept arguing. He hit her again, and she grabbed the boys and ran out of the house.
Patricia went straight to the police station to press charges, but what she found were patronizing officers. The cops accused her of making Abel angry and deserving it. They told her she didn’t want to get her husband in trouble. They said it was family business and to handle it at home. They refused to press charges. When Abel walked in, still drunk, the station became like a locker room, and the matter was laughed away.
Noah was nine and couldn’t believe what was happening. He thought cops had a duty to help. That night, he learned that police were just men with badges, not defenders of the law.
Patricia took the boys to Soweto, and Abel followed a few weeks later to apologize. His easy way and charm made his apology seem ingenuous. Patricia wasn’t sold, but her mother convinced her to go back. She said all men hit women, even Temperance. Patricia went home with Abel, and things went back to normal for a few years.
Abel was a talented mechanic and known for his skills. Patricia believed in him and wanted to help him succeed. When the garage where they’d first met closed down, Patricia used her savings to help Abel buy it. But the garage was drowning in debt, and they inherited all of it.
Keeping the garage alive became their lives. After school, Noah would do his homework there while Abel worked. Sometimes, he would sleep in a car if Abel was behind and had to work through the night.
The whole family started spending nights in the garage. Eventually, Patricia sold the Eden Park house to support the business. They lived in the garage full time. Noah was 11 years old.
The garage was a cold cement room filled with machines, cars, and parts. Abel, Patricia, and Andrew slept in the office on a floor mat. Noah slept in cars. He became a connoisseur of car sleeping, knowing which ones provided the most room and which ones were the most comfortable. American cars were the best with their big bench seats.
Noah had to clean himself in a janitor sink, use rearview mirrors to do his hair, then put on his school uniform without soiling it. He never wanted the kids at school to know where he lived.
Noah also had to work at the garage after school. He couldn’t play anymore. He couldn’t do his homework anymore. He’d change from his uniform to work clothes and climb under the hood of a car. He could do tune-ups and basic service tasks by himself.
Despite all the work, the business wasn’t making any money. At one point, they couldn’t afford food anymore. For a month, Noah and his family ate a dish of wild spinach and caterpillars. It was the poorest they’d ever been.
Noah hated this period of life the most—always working, nothing to eat, getting dressed for school at the garage. He wasn’t mad at Abel and his mother, though, because he could see how hard they worked. But he soon learned that their life was worse than it needed to be.
Abel was a poor businessman and was buying parts on credit with crazy interest rates. He was amassing huge debts. Instead of paying off the debts with the money he was making, he used the money to buy alcohol, drinking the business into the ground.
Patricia quit her job and started doing the books to help. She used her office skills to turn things around. She was making it work, and customers and vendors noticed. But Abel started to feel like she was taking over the business, and he didn’t like it.
Finally, after a year of striving for nothing, Patricia left the business. She wasn’t going to sacrifice her life so he could get drunk. She found another secretarial job and bought the house in Highland North. Not long after, the garage closed and Abel moved his shop to the back yard.
After the move to Highland North, Patricia divorced Abel, but only financially. A couple could be legally divorced for financial independence but still traditionally married as a union. Patricia took back control of her own finances and started using her maiden name again, but they were still a family under one roof.
Patricia was moving up at work and making more money. She paid for everything, which made Abel feel even less like a man. He started drinking more. He became violent more often, including one incident when he trapped Noah in the kitchen pantry and punched him in the ribcage for a small school infraction. He started beating Patricia more regularly, as well. Each time, the police were called. Each time, they buddied up with Abel and did nothing.
Even with these episodes, Abel’s funny, charismatic character was always there under the booze. Their lives were encased in terror, but when he wasn’t abusing them, it was hard not to love him.
Then Abel bought a gun. That was the beginning of the end for Noah. Life became toxic in the house. Noah grew to almost the same height as Abel. If Noah had been Abel’s son, it would have been fine. But he wasn’t, and that made him a threat to Abel.
In addition, Noah had become a representation of Patricia’s former life, a life that Abel couldn’t control. Abel hated Noah for reminding him of Patricia’s past, and Patricia told Noah he needed to leave. She feared what Abel would do to Noah and helped him move out after high school.
Patricia eventually moved into her own bedroom for a year or two. Noah was counting the days until Andrew was eighteen and would leave home. He wanted his mother to be free to leave Abel once and for all. But when Andrew was nine, she became pregnant again.
Physically, this pregnancy should never have happened. Patricia’s tubes were tied after Andrew, and she was middle-aged. Not even the doctors knew what to say. But Patricia saw it as a sign from God. God wanted her to bring more decent men into the world. She seemed regretful of her new predicament, but she was determined to make it work.
Noah, on the other hand, saw that she would forever be stuck in that house with Abel. When the new baby, Isaac, was born, Noah retreated from the family. He didn’t visit often. Then, another event would make him stay away for good.
Noah had gone over to the house for a visit and found police cars out front. Patricia had intervened when Abel was fighting with one of his workers, and Abel used Andrew’s bicycle to beat her. As always, the police acted like old chums with Abel, and nothing happened.
After that incident, Patricia hired people from work to build her a small dwelling in the backyard, where she started living with Isaac. Noah was incredulous, but she told him it was the only power she had. No one was going to help her, but she would make sure Abel was shamed by a wife living in the backyard instead of with him.
Noah stopped calling and visiting. As much as he hated Abel, his anger was directed more at Patricia. He blamed her for staying and choosing to be abused. He was too young to understand domestic violence or how it affects people. He didn’t understand relationships at all.
Noah didn’t realize the predicament Patricia was in. Abuse was part of life for African women. No one stepped in, not even the police. What was she supposed to do with children from different fathers in a male-driven society that refused to acknowledge her suffering?
The last time Noah fought with her about Abel, she told him if she tried to leave, he would kill all of them. She was calm when she said it, matter-of-fact. Noah never mentioned it again.
Patricia did finally leave Abel, though. Noah doesn’t know why because he wasn’t around. He had started working as a comedian and was traveling more. Patricia bought a different house in the same neighborhood and met someone new.
Life moved forward for years for Patricia and the younger boys. Then, one Sunday, she was coming home from church with her new husband and his family, her two sons included, when Abel got out of the car with his gun.
Abel pointed the gun at Patricia, telling her she ruined his life. Andrew stepped up and tried to reason with Abel, as he’d always been able to do. Abel had always listened to Andrew, but this time, Abel threatened to shoot him. Andrew could see it was a real threat and stepped aside.
Abel started shooting, and Patricia jumped in the way to protect the others. She was hit in the bottom and collapsed. She yelled for everyone to run.
Patricia was on the ground trying to get up when Abel pointed the gun directly at her head. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He tried again. Another misfire. He kept trying to pull the trigger, but the gun kept malfunctioning.
When Abel became distracted by the gun, Patricia pushed him and ran for the car. Andrew jumped in beside her. Just as she got the car started, another shot rang out, and Patricia’s blood splattered the windshield. Abel shot her in the back of the head through the rear window. Andrew pulled her out of the way and got behind the wheel. He drove straight to the hospital.
Noah was in bed when he got the call from Andrew. He didn’t have to ask when Andrew said their mother had been shot. He knew it was Abel.
Noah raced to the hospital, worried but not scared. Andrew had been calm on the phone, even making small talk at first. But when Noah learned she’d been shot in the head, he cried harder than he ever had. He felt a pain so big there was no other way to release it.
Noah was able to see Patricia in the ER. He lost it at the sight of her covered in blood, a hole in her face, and part of her nose missing. Seeing her like that made him rage. He called Abel’s number, and Abel answered. Noah shouted that Abel had killed his mother. Calmly, Abel acknowledged it and said if he could, he’d kill Noah too.
A nurse told Noah and Andrew that Patricia would be taken to a state hospital because she didn’t have insurance. She’d canceled it because she never used it. Noah, now a burgeoning celebrity, said he would pay for her treatment. The nurse argued that the bills could be expensive. They didn’t yet know how much damage was involved. The bill could be as much as six hundred thousand rand. Noah would be paying off that debt forever.
For an instant, Noah considered whether he should pay. What if he lost all his money and she didn’t recover? What if it was up to him to raise his brothers now? He wondered what his mother would say. She never wanted Noah to have to pay the black tax. Noah was afraid of getting sucked back into poverty, but this was his mother. He gave the nurse his credit card.
The doctor came out after examining Patricia and didn’t know what to say. She’d survived nothing short of a miracle. Both bullets had passed through her body without hitting any major organs, arteries, veins, or nerves.
The bullet in her head slipped past the spinal cord, ricocheted off her cheekbone, and left through her nose. What Noah had seen earlier was just the aftermath. In actuality, Patricia had only lost a small bit off the side of her nose. Other than that, she was fine. They hadn’t even performed surgery. She was home within four days and back to work after another three.
Noah sat with her in recovery and felt regret. He was angry that he’d abandoned her and his brothers. He was mad that the police had never taken Abel’s abuse seriously. He was sorry he hadn’t killed Abel when he’d had the chance. He was furious with God. All of her devotion to Jesus, and this was what she got?
When Patricia woke up, she joked and said at least Noah was the prettiest one in the family now. They both laughed until they cried.
After Andrew drove off with Patricia, Abel had taken Isaac. Isaac asked him why he’d killed mommy, to which Abel said he was unhappy and sad. Abel dropped Isaac off at a friend’s house after telling Isaac he was going to kill himself.
Abel went around to all of his friends and relatives and told them what he did and what he was going to do. Toward the end of the day, a family member told him he was a coward and to turn himself in. Abel turned over the gun and went to the police.
Noah tried to block Abel’s bail, but because the police had never agreed to press charges, he had no priors. And Abel claimed he needed to take care of his sons, so he was released.
The trial dragged on. Patricia’s injuries changed the severity of the charge, and he was only accused of attempted murder. Abel took a plea deal and spent no time in jail. He got to maintain joint custody of his sons.
Abel still lives somewhere in Johannesburg, not too far from Patricia.
Patricia’s side of the story was the most significant. She remembered everything that happened up to starting the car. She said when Abel pointed the gun at her head, she started to pray.
Nobody has ever been able to explain why the gun malfunctioned. The gun worked, then it stopped working, and then it worked again. The cops have no explanation because the kind of gun used didn’t usually malfunction the way it did.
Noah couldn’t get over that Patricia had canceled her health insurance. When he told her this, she said she had insurance: Jesus. Noah couldn’t argue with her logic. The gun jamming was miraculous. But he argued that Jesus wasn’t there when her hospital bill needed paying. The bill had only come to 50,000 rand.
Patricia told Noah he was right. Jesus hadn’t paid her bill. But he had given her a son who could and did.
Trevor Noah’s life is certainly unique, but there are universal elements to his story.
What aspects of Noah’s story resonated with you the most?
What themes can you identify in Born a Crime?
Was there anything new or surprising you learned from Noah’s memoir?