Born a Crime:
Stories from a South African Childhood
By Trevor
Noah
Spiegel
& Grau, 2016
Reviewed by
Margaretta wa Gacheru
Trevor Noah
has been accused of being an African who’s “too Westernized.” The host of ‘The
Daily Show’ on the cable channel Comedy Central just achieved the epitome of
success in mainstream media history. He’s successfully replaced one of the most
popular satiric ‘fake news’ anchor men, Jon Stewart, after his failure had been
initially predicted and practically assured.
So how could
a South African comedian who probably had little acquaintance with the in’s,
out’s and underbelly of American news achieve the sort of satirical edge that
Stewart’s audiences had come to expect?
Well, he did
it by being real, doing his homework and drawing on his own knowledge, grounded
in a global media environment that brought American news into South African
homes just as easily as it went into American urban dwellings.
In his
memoir, ‘Born a Crime’, Trevor, whose father was Swiss-German and his mother Xhosa
(like Nelson Mandela), reveals the key influences and earthy experiences that
have shaped his life. The book exposes the gritty, often gut-wrenching
struggles he went through to become the amazingly insightful and witty human
being he shows himself to be five nights a week on cable TV.
Always the
odd man out, Noah’s life was quite literally a crime according to Apartheid
law, which was only changed several years after he was born.
He was six
years old when Mandela was released from 27 years in prison and life in South
Africa began to change. Legal frameworks upholding racism were relaxed. But for
poor people, life hardly changed at all.
Trevor had
grown up dirt poor. His mother was a brilliantly street-savvy peasant who was
bound and determined to have a better life than the rest of her family. She ran
away from home in her teens, overcame countless odds during the height of Apartheid,
got secretarial training and finally met Trevor’s father.
But while
there was a loving relationship between them, the two lived together only
briefly. Essentially, Trevor was raised by a single mother who adored her son
despite his being a naughty trickster of a child.
Having
discovered early on that he would never be anything other than an ‘outsider’,
Trevor also realized that his sense of humor was his means of making his way in
life.
‘Born a
Crime’ also reveals how self-reflective he is. Having grown up on the edge of a
racist society which was just barely emerging from the fascist apartheid
regime, he had clearly given a good deal of thought to how he’d managed to make
his way in the world.
His book is
rich with sociological insights on the meaning and methods of racism. But his
writing is never academic. It’s exceedingly personal and revealing of the sundry
survival tactics he employed to not only survive but actually do quite well
financially as well as socially.
Never the
lady’s man, Trevor’s experience with women was nearly non-existent, given his
staunch Christian upbringing and his mixed status. For in South Africa, he did
not fit into any official classification. He was neither white nor black nor
colored, although he identified as a black. But blacks largely viewed him as ‘white’
and therefore alien.
The beauty
of ‘Born a Crime is that it’s relevant to anyone concerned with how one savvy ‘outsider’
copes with his alienation from society at large. The fact that Trevor found
humor his salvation as well as his source of livelihood offers a lesson we can
all learn from. For he proves that laughter and wit can go a long way to easing
social tensions and solving deep seated social problems.
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