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

Bongani invites Noah to “the hood,” which is what they begin to call Alexandra after the post-apartheid influx of American rap and hip hop. Noah describes the layout of Alexandra, which is made up of some permanent homes and many corrugated tin shanties. Bongani’s family lives in East Bank, the nicest part of Alexandra, where the government built small two-bedroom permanent houses.

After Noah graduates, he and his mom agree he should move out to escape Abel’s abuse. He wants to go to study computer programming but needs to make money for tuition. Noah hangs out with Bongani and his crew, who are known around Alexandra as “cheese boys.” Because cheese is a luxury, anyone with a bit of money to spare is called a cheese boy. Post-apartheid, even the cheese boys have trouble making money. Because employers suddenly have to pay real wages rather than “slavery” wages, employment is scarce. 

As such, people turn to crime, which is integrated into life in “the hood.” Noah’s crew start out selling pirated CDs. Bongani begins “hustling” with their money, using it for cash loans that accrue interest. They work all day, burning and selling CDs and reselling black market items. 

Two years pass and Noah forgets about university. He is comfortable “hustling” in “the hood,” where people are too busy trying to survive to question who he is or his lineage. At the same time, it’s a “hamster wheel” that never lets him go anywhere else. He is DJing a party at a middle-class neighborhood one night when the cops come and shoot his computer after it takes too long to shut down. Noah’s hard drive is fried and all of his music is gone. Noah and his friends try to get by just on their “hustling” business. One day, his friend steals a camera that is “full of pictures of a nice white family on vacation” (215). For the first time, Noah feels bad about their actions, though he never before considered them “crimes.” 

On the way back from a dance battle in Soweto, they’re pulled over by a cop, who finds a gun in the minibus in which they’re traveling. Because Noah’s friends are from Alexandra, the cop only arrests them. He takes them to jail when they can’t afford a bribe. When the cop finds out Noah lives in Highlands North, he is confused why Noah is hanging out with “crooks.” The next day, a friend’s father pays their bribe and they are released. 

These occurrences teach Noah that he and his friends are “more cheese than hood” (218). However, his friends are restricted to “the hood” because of “where they were from” and “what they looked like” (218). Noah recognizes that he is free to leave “that world” (219), but his friends aren’t.

Noah is driving one of his stepfather Abel’s unregistered “junkers” when he’s pulled over by police. Carjackings are common in South Africa, and are often tied to homicides, so the police suspect Noah of grand theft auto and possible homicide. He knows he has been racially profiled, as Colored people are some of the most feared, violent gangsters in South Africa.

Noah is terrified of calling his mom for help, so he decides to handle the situation on his own. A cop warns him not to accept a state defense attorney, as they are notoriously ill-prepared. Noah borrows money from a friend to hire a private lawyer.

After almost a week in jail, his trial day approaches. Inside the holding cell where he is placed, the hundred plus men also waiting have divided themselves clearly along racial lines, grouped in corners of white, Black, Colored, and Indian people. The moment reminds Noah of all the past times he has been made to choose between groups or “explain who [he] was” (233). In the holding cell, he chooses to hang out with the white people, who are mostly facing trial for white-collar crime.

When Noah is finally brought into the courtroom, he breaks down, repeating “I’m not fine” (234). Because he is nonviolent and has no priors, he is given bail, which his cousin Mlungisi pays. Mlungisi takes Noah home, where he plans to act like nothing happened. 

He notices later that day that his mother looks “hurt.” She reveals that the money for his lawyer and bail came from her, and she is hurt he didn’t come to her directly.

Noah retells the history of Abel’s presence in his life. When Noah is around six, his mother’s Volkswagen breaks down often, and they take it to Abel’s mechanic shop to be repaired. During this time, his mother develops a relationship with Abel, and he soon moves in with them.

When Patricia tells Noah her intention to marry Abel, he tells her he has a bad feeling and advises her not to do it. They get married anyway, and a year later, Andrew is born. After that, they go to visit Abel’s family for the first time. Abel is a firstborn son bringing home his firstborn son, an auspicious event in Abel’s family’s highly patriarchal Tsonga culture. He wants Patricia to play her traditional role, but she refuses. They fight the entire trip, and Patricia refuses to go back.

Abel is a toxic presence in Noah and his mother’s lives. It becomes clear to Noah that “what [Abel] thought his family should be” did not include Noah (244). Abel kicks Fufi and Panther out of doors and gets so angry about Patricia spending time at church that he stops fixing her car so she can’t leave. Noah and Patricia can take minibuses to church, but with Abel controlling their transportation, it’s hard for Noah to find a way to see his father, who soon moves to Cape Town.

After his marriage to Patricia, Abel starts drinking heavily, which makes him angry and violent. One day, he almost burns the house down trying to cook while drunk late at night. Patricia calls her mother to talk about it, but Abel hangs up her call. She is angry. He claims she doesn’t respect him and hits her across the face. Noah holds Andrew, who is crying. Patricia questions Abel again, and he hits her again. 

She takes Noah and Andrew and leaves the house. She goes to the police station to lay a charge against Abel, but they refuse to interfere in “a family thing” (249). Abel arrives and the police banter with him; Noah is aghast. Patricia takes Noah and Andrew to Soweto to stay with her family. After several weeks, she gives Abel another chance, and for years, there is not another incident.

Patricia “g[ives] up everything for Abel” (252). Though she resists the subservient domestic role he wants her to fill, she wants him to succeed, and she helps him buy the business where he works, ultimately selling their house in Eden Park to invest more money in the business. Abel, Patricia, and Andrew sleep on a mat in the office, and Noah sleeps in the cars. In his preteen years, Noah works so much at the garage that he falls behind in school. They continue to lose money, eating nothing but “wild spinach, cooked with caterpillars” for months (253).

Abel drinks away all their money. Patricia quits her office job to help balance the books, but Abel soon resents that she is “running his business” (254). After a year of this, she is fed up with living in the garage. She gets a new job, allows Abel’s garage to be seized by creditors, and moves them into a house in Highlands North. She gets a financial divorce from Abel to protect her credit and lack of debt, but they stay traditionally married.

One day, Noah forges Patricia’s signature on a school form. While Patricia doesn’t care, Abel takes Noah into a room and starts hitting, wrestling, and pinching him. Noah escapes the room and doesn’t stop running until he is three neighborhoods away. After that, he “lived like a mouse in that house” (258). Whenever Abel is around, Noah leaves or makes sure Abel is not between him and the door. Abel occasionally gets in “a punch or a kick” but Noah never again trusts him (259).

Abel drinks himself into debt over and over again while Patricia starts moving up through her new real estate job and making more money. This makes Abel drink more and become more violent. He hits Fufi and Panther and starts hitting Patricia again. The cops’ “boys’ club” refuses to do anything about it (260). Abel can be “likable and charming” (261) but produced an “undercurrent of terror” in their house (261). His bursts of physical abuse had three, then two, then one year between them, which allowed Noah and Patricia to “think it wouldn’t happen again,” though they never “forgot it was possible” (261).

When Abel buys a gun, claiming that the world needs to “learn to respect him” (262), Noah moves out. He is furious when his mother gets pregnant, angry that his mother plans to spend 18 more years at least with Abel, but Patricia thinks her pregnancy is a sign from God. She names her son Isaac. Noah starts visiting less. One time when he comes, there are police at the house because Abel has beaten Patricia with a bicycle. 

Patricia has a small house built for her and Isaac in the backyard. Noah is incredulous, but Patricia thinks this is her only option, since the police are all friends with Abel and won’t help her. For his own well-being, Noah stops seeing his mother or visiting the house.

Noah starts his comedy career, touring around South Africa and England and hosting radio and television shows. Patricia buys herself a new house away from Abel in Highlands North, meets a new man and gets married to him. One day, Noah gets a call mid-morning from Andrew, who sounds surprisingly calm as he tells him that Abel has shot Patricia.

Noah and his cousin Mlungisi drive to the hospital. Over the phone, Andrew tells him that Abel was waiting for Patricia, him, and Isaac when they got home from church. He “started shooting” (267), hitting her in the butt and then the head. When Noah gets to the hospital, Andrew is covered in blood. When he sees Noah he breaks down. They’re both crying, Noah from “pain and anger” and Andrew from “helplessness” (268). Andrew tells Noah that Abel said Patricia had “taken everything away from [him]” and Abel intended to kill their entire family (269). He tells Noah how Abel tried to kill Patricia “execution style,” but ended up shooting her through the back of her head as they ran away.

Noah calls Abel, not knowing what to do, and tells him he killed Patricia. Abel agrees and before hanging up says that if he finds Noah, he’ll kill him as well. The hospital wants to eject Patricia because she doesn’t have health insurance, but Noah agrees to pay everything out of pocket.

After several hours, the surgeon says Patricia is stable. The bullet missed every major part of her brain by a hair. The bullet came through so cleanly that she doesn’t need surgery. The next day Noah visits her in the hospital. When she wakes up, he begins crying hysterically. She tells him to look on the bright side, which is that now he’s “officially the best-looking person in the family” (276).

Later, they find out that Abel took 4-year-old Isaac to a friend’s house before going around to his relatives, telling them he plans to die by suicide. One relative tells him to turn himself in, so he does. Because the police never filed Patricia’s many domestic abuse charges, Abel gets bail on no priors, retains joint custody of Andrew and Isaac, and is let go on probation. As of the book’s publication, he continues to live near Patricia in Highlands North.