"Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah, Chapters 1–3

The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other.

Long before apartheid existed these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another.

Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer.

The Xhosa waged a long war against the white man as well, but after experiencing the futility of battle against a better-armed foe, many Xhosa chiefs took a more nimble approach.

The third church offered passion and catharsis; it was a place where you truly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit inside you.

The more time we spent at church, she reckoned, the more blessings we accrued, like a Starbucks Rewards Card.

Whenever I found myself up against my mother’s faith-based obstinacy, I would try, as respectfully as possible, to counter with an opposing point of view.

Spates of violence broke out between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC, the African National Congress, as they jockeyed for power.

Spates of violence broke out between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC, the African National Congress, as they jockeyed for power.

The ANC was a broad coalition encompassing many different tribes, but its leaders at the time were primarily Xhosa.

Eden Park sat not far from the sprawling townships of the East Rand, Thokoza and Katlehong, which were the sites of some of the most horrific Inkatha—ANC clashes.

Another guy, his crony, got out of the passenger side.

In addition to being violent gangsters, South African minibus drivers are notorious for complaining and haranguing passengers as they drive.

The stereotypes of Zulu and Xhosa women were as ingrained as those of the men. Zulu women were well-behaved and dutiful. Xhosa women were promiscuous and unfaithful.

To impose white rule, the Dutch colonists went to war with the natives, ultimately developing a set of laws to subjugate and enslave them.

They did so because, in the mid-1800s, in what had been written off as a near-worthless way station on the route to the Far East, a few lucky capitalists stumbled upon the richest gold and diamond reserves in the world, and an endless supply of expendable bodies was needed to go in the ground and get it all out.

To maintain power in the face of the country’s rising and restless black majority, the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools.

A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand.

Race-mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.

Indian areas were segregated from colored areas, which were segregated from black areas—all of them segregated from white areas and separated from one another by buffer zones of empty land.

If you ask my mother whether she ever considered the ramifications of having a mixed child under apartheid, she will say no.

In the early 1980s, the South African government began making minor reforms in an attempt to quell international protest over the atrocities and human rights abuses of apartheid.

So she stayed in town, hiding and sleeping in public restrooms until she learned the rules of navigating the city from the other black women who had contrived to live there...

As a former trading colony, South Africa has always had a large expatriate community.

Hillbrow at the time was the Greenwich Village of South Africa. It was a thriving scene, cosmopolitan and liberal.

Estranged from her family, pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone.

The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes, and regulations—I was born a crime.

When I was born, my mother hadn’t seen her family in three years, but she wanted me to know them and wanted them to know me, so the prodigal daughter returned.

The township was in a constant state of insurrection; someone was always marching or protesting somewhere and had to be suppressed.

I come from a country where people are more likely to visit sangomas—shamans, traditional healers, pejoratively known as witch doctors—than they are to visit doctors of Western medicine.

I come from a country where people are more likely to visit sangomas—shamans, traditional healers, pejoratively known as witch doctors—than they are to visit doctors of Western medicine.

The court is presided over by a judge. There is a docket. There is a prosecutor.

Your defense attorney has to prove lack of motive, go through the crime-scene forensics, present a staunch defense.

His name was Temperance Noah, which was odd since he was not a man of moderation at all.

He was boisterous and loud.

We found out much later in life that he was bipolar, but before that we just thought he was eccentric.

Dinky, as his name implies, was dinky.

Dinky was trying to masquerade as this patriarch that he wasn’t.

In Soweto you were always hearing about men getting doused with pots of boiling water—often a woman’s only recourse. And men were lucky if it was water. Some women used hot cooking oil.

Her eyes had gone white, clouded over by cataracts.

You’d first build a shanty on your plot, a makeshift structure of plywood and corrugated iron.

You’d first build a shanty on your plot, a makeshift structure of plywood and corrugated iron.

My mother gasped. “We’ve been bewitched! It’s a demon!”

If someone has put a curse on you or your home, there is always the talisman or totem, a tuft of hair or the head of a cat, the physical manifestation of the spiritual thing, proof of the demon’s presence.

If someone has put a curse on you or your home, there is always the talisman or totem, a tuft of hair or the head of a cat, the physical manifestation of the spiritual thing, proof of the demon’s presence.