By taking us through the journey of his young and eventful life, Trevor Noah has held up a mirror to our society, writes Shannon Ebrahim.
If there is one book you should put at the top of your reading list this year, it is Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime. By taking us through the journey of his young and eventful life, Noah has held up a mirror to our society, exposing the many paradoxes and deep truths about who we are as a nation.
It is rare that someone just over 30 years old can write such a captivating account of their life, and reflect so thoughtfully on how his very chequered past has moulded him into the person he is today.
What spurred me to write this book review was the repulsion I felt after reading Gabriel Crouse’s commentary on Born a Crime in The Sunday Independent last week.
It was exceedingly negative and failed to recognise the genius of Noah’s storytelling.
Crouse was intent on disparaging the book by claiming it contained historical inaccuracies, painting Noah as arrogant and overrated.
But I’m quite convinced if that is what someone gets out of such a book they are utterly shallow and incapable of grasping the deeper meaning that the story offers us as South Africans.
Noah’s story resonates with many people across race and class that I’ve met with. To some, Noah’s recounting of his mother’s deep religious convictions as a born-again Christian is wholly reminiscent of their own mothers, who quote from the Scriptures at every turn.
The fact that Noah was made to attend three different church services on a Sunday as a boy - white church, mixed church and then black church - as his mother got something different out of each of them, made for fascinating reading.
For a boy to have experienced years of endless church services in addition to weekly neighbourhood prayer meetings is very much a testament to the religiosity of our society.
The notion that every challenge that crosses our path is somehow God’s will and that we are being tested is something many of us have heard from our own mothers.
What is interesting is the fact that Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah found God and meaning in churches across the colour line, and was keen to immerse herself in each one of them.
The fact that her son was exposed to a plethora of different religious gatherings at a time when apartheid was slowly being dismantled would have left a lasting impression on a boy who himself was a mixture of all worlds.
What is truly heart-wrenching is the obvious pain that Trevor Noah endured growing up as a “mixed” child in a society that categorised everything according to race.
The stain of apartheid was so deeply ingrained in the psyche of its children that even during the transition and during the first decade of freedom, Noah described how children automatically segregated themselves on the playground, in the classroom, and in virtually every aspect of life.
His constant nagging sense that he didn’t belong anywhere throughout virtually all of his school career shows us how utterly the apartheid system destroyed the notion of humanity.
When we put the book down and reflect on our own children’s experiences today as they grow up in South Africa more than two decades after the advent of freedom, much of this unofficial segregation remains in our schools.
It is rare to hear that children socialise broadly across racial lines. While they may not exhibit malice towards each other as they have not grown up with apartheid indoctrination, they know very little of each other’s culture, and rarely immerse themselves in a reality unfamiliar to their own.
In some ways Noah’s story strikes a raw nerve, as we realise that very little has changed in the years since he was in primary and secondary school, and we have to question how transformed we really are as a nation at a psychological level.
For many white South Africans the book serves as a real eye-opener to the everyday reality of many in the townships, where the struggle is to survive day to day, to provide enough food for the family.
Noah did not have enough finances to even get transport to school - which so many in our middle and upper classes simply take for granted.
Noah describes how for years he was given daily detention for being late for school, but no one bothered to look into the underlying cause of his transgression - the fact he had to walk miles to school every day as his mother could not afford to give him bus fare.
This type of indifference likely permeates many of our schools today.
What was truly devastating was to discover that one of the world’s greatest comedians, host of The Daily Show, spent a year or two of his young life eating mopane worms for dinner night after night as there was no money for anything better, and worms were the cheapest form of protein.
To think that today’s king of comedy had slept on the back seat of a different car every night - cars that were brought into his stepfather’s mechanic shop to be fixed.
This was due to the fact that his family had fallen on hard times and were forced to sell the family home and move into the mechanic shop out of desperation.
It is truly a miracle that a child who barely had time to do his homework as he was forced to help service vehicles after school, and sleep in vehicles on the shop floor, could ultimately defy all the odds and become a global celebrity just two decades later.
It would bring any reader to tears when Noah relates how one night he broke down in tears, saying: “Mom, I just cannot eat worms for dinner any more.”
But despite all the financial challenges, Noah’s mother was intent on giving her child the tools to rise above his station in life and compete with the best.
For much of his childhood she spent every spare penny on sourcing second-hand books for him to read, which he devoured.
She drummed into him a sense of right and wrong, disciplined him consistently, and was forever invoking positive reinforcement to empower him to believe in himself.
Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies was that Trevor did not have the money to finance his university studies, at which he was likely to excel.
But even though life did not present the opportunities that a highly intelligent and studious boy like Trevor deserved, he cut out opportunities for himself on the stage, and quickly rose to become one of South Africa’s most loved comedians.
Noah’s experience of childhood trauma and resilience is very much a South African story.
The story of his mother is a harrowing tale of one woman’s fight to beat the odds in a system that was stacked against her, to achieve personal and financial freedom, and to survive an abusive relationship that almost ended her life. Again, very much a South African story.
The striking point that underlies the story of Noah’s mother is how a fiercely independent and ambitious woman, who refused to marry Noah’s Swiss father for fear of losing her independence, could have ended up in a cycle of violent abuse dealt out by another man she ended up marrying.
The story unmasks the shocking indifference of the South African police to abused women - failing to take reports of brutal beatings meted out to Patricia Noah time and again, until eventually her abuser tried to kill her.
The shocking revelation that her husband attempted to shoot her execution-style in the head one fateful day, although the gun misfired four times, only for him to ultimately succeed in shooting her through the back of the head.
The fact that for attempted murder her husband received a suspended sentence and went right back to living in her neighbourhood is a stunning indictment of our justice system, which fails to protect women at every level.
What ties the book together so nicely is that the fervent prayers of Patricia Noah as she stared down the barrel of a gun must have been heard, as the doctors at the Linksfield Hospital could not explain how the bullet entering the back of her head missed the brain and every nerve and membrane, ricocheted off her cheek and came out through her nostril.
She gave full credit for her miraculous survival to God, and the experience seemed to impress upon Noah as a young adult that there was certainly a higher power pulling the strings.
When one considers the immense success Noah is achieving in the high-flying world of American entertainment, providing searing satire on Trump’s rise, one has to marvel at the magnitude of his trajectory.
His story provides lessons for all of us, but above all it gives us a son of the soil to be truly proud of.
Figures like Trevor Noah help us believe in ourselves and to know that, despite the gross injustices of apartheid, we have the capacity to rise and beat all the odds.
* Ebrahim is Group Foreign Editor.