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THE WORLD DOESN’T LOVE YOU My mom never gave me an inch. Anytime I got in trouble it was tough love, lectures, punishment, and hidings. Every time. For every infraction. You get that with a lot of black parents. They’re trying to discipline you before the system does. “I need to do this to you before the police do it to you.” Because that’s all black parents are thinking from the day you’re old enough to walk out into the street, where the law is waiting. In Alex, getting arrested was a fact of life. It was so common that out on the corner we had a sign for it, a shorthand, clapping your wrists together like you were being put in handcuffs. Everyone knew what that meant. “Where’s Bongani?” Wrist clap. “Oh, shit. When?” “Friday night.” “Damn.” My mom hated the hood. She didn’t like my friends there. If I brought them back to the house, she didn’t even want them coming inside. “I don’t like those boys,” she’d say. She didn’t hate them personally; she hated what they represented. “You and those boys get into so much shit,” she’d say. “You must be careful who you surround yourself with because where you are can determine who you are.” She said the thing she hated most about the hood was that it didn’t pressure me to become better. She wanted me to hang out with my cousin at his university. “What’s the difference if I’m at university or I’m in the hood?” I’d say. “It’s not like I’m going to university.” “Yes, but the pressure of the university is going to get you. I know you. You won’t sit by and watch these guys become better than you. If you’re in an environment that is positive and progressive, you too will become that. I keep telling you to change your life, and you don’t. One day you’re going to get arrested, and when you do, don’t call me. I’ll tell the police to lock you up just to teach you a lesson.” Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay their kid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer—the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’t always work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You’re trying to teach him a
lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life. — One morning I saw an ad in the paper. Some shop was having a clearance sale on mobile phones, and they were selling them at such a ridiculous price I knew Bongani and I could flip them in the hood for a profit. This shop was out in the suburbs, too far to walk and too outof-the-way to take a minibus. Fortunately my stepfather’s workshop and a bunch of old cars were in our backyard. I’d been stealing Abel’s junkers to get around since I was fourteen. I would say I was test driving them to make sure they’d been repaired correctly. Abel didn’t think that was funny. I’d been caught many times, caught and subjected to my mother’s wrath. But that had never stopped me from doing anything. Most of these junkers weren’t street legal. They didn’t have proper registrations or proper number plates. Luckily, Abel also had a stack of old number plates in the back of the garage. I quickly learned I could just put one on an old car and hit the road. I was nineteen, maybe twenty, not thinking about any of the ramifications of this. I stopped by Abel’s garage when no one was around, picked up one of the cars, the red Mazda I’d taken to the matric dance, slapped some old plates on it, and set off in search of discounted cell phones. I got pulled over in Hillbrow. Cops in South Africa don’t give you a reason when they pull you over. Cops pull you over because they’re cops and they have the power to pull you over; it’s as simple as that. I used to watch American movies where cops would pull people over and say, “You didn’t signal” or “Your taillight’s out.” I’d always wonder, Why do American cops bother lying? One thing I appreciate about South Africa is that we have not yet refined the system to the point where we feel the need to lie. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” “Because you’re a policeman and I’m a black person?” “That’s correct. License and registration, please.” When the cop pulled me over, it was one of those situations where I wanted to say, “Hey, I know you guys are racially profiling me!” But I couldn’t argue the case because I was, at that moment, actually breaking the law. The cop walked up to my window, asked me the standard cop questions. Where are you going? Is this your car? Whose car is this? I couldn’t answer. I completely froze. Being young, funnily enough, I was more worried about getting in trouble with my parents than with the law. I’d had run-ins with the cops in Alexandra, in Soweto, but it was always more about the circumstance: a party getting shut down, a raid on a minibus. The law was all around me, but it had never come down on me, Trevor, specifically. And when you haven’t had much experience with the law, the law appears rational—cops are dicks for the most part, but you also recognize that they’re doing a job. Your parents, on the other hand, are not rational at all. They have served as judge, jury, and executioner for your entire childhood, and it feels like they give you a life sentence for every misdemeanor. In that moment, when I should have been scared of the cop, all I was thinking was Shit shit shit; I’m in so much trouble when I get home. The cop called in the number-plate registration and discovered that it didn’t match the
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Copyright © 2016 by Trevor Noah Al
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IMMORALITY ACT, 1927 To prohibit il
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RUN Sometimes in big Hollywood movi
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like bouncers at a club, and hold t
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failed her she’d use her wits. If
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you stealing our customers? Why are
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there, this little boy and his mom,
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BORN A CRIME I grew up in South Afr
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Many of the prostitutes in town wer
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he hadn’t, but once I existed he
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Traveling around the world today, I
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TREVOR, PRAY I grew up in a world r
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That’s all she did, all day, ever
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speakeasy. The shebeens were where
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using sonar. Every time she called
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praying continued. It went on for s
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CHAMELEON One afternoon I was playi
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As a kid I understood that people w
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was an ocean of black, like someone
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Before apartheid, any black South A
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and uncles had gone off to the citi
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through those. My books were my pri
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If we weren’t at school or work o
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Apartheid, for all its power, had f
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at school used overhead projectors
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She shrugged again. “So sad. I ho
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“What?” “Look, did you or did
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When I was seven years old, my moth
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I grew up in a black family in a bl
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oth. She brought them home, and I w
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They went back and forth. This woma
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ROBERT My father is a complete myst
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dad’s, where we’d watch Formula
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A bottle of Sprite. Custard with ca
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W hen Dutch colonists landed at the
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your grandfather couldn’t keep hi
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Things like that happened a lot. I
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Revenge truly is sweet. It takes yo
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A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
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Valentine’s card and the flowers
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OUTSIDER After finishing primary sc
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work for it—and I still get my br
Page 91 and 92: A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
Page 93 and 94: me the digits one by one as I wrote
Page 95 and 96: COLORBLIND At Sandringham I got to
Page 97 and 98: pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I
Page 99 and 100: “Is it David?” “No.” “Ria
Page 102 and 103: A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
Page 104 and 105: I got up onstage and Tom did some t
Page 106 and 107: There was a red Mazda that we’d h
Page 108 and 109: hair and started painting this crea
Page 110 and 111: “Are you ready?” I said. “Let
Page 112: I’d been dating a girl for over a
Page 115 and 116: GO HITLER! When I was in grade nine
Page 117 and 118: Business was booming. By matric I w
Page 119 and 120: Back then, most DJs could spin for
Page 121 and 122: someone must be the toughest guy of
Page 123 and 124: My mind was racing, trying to figur
Page 125 and 126: THE CHEESE BOYS My friend Bongani w
Page 127 and 128: settlement going on. Third, Fourth,
Page 129 and 130: In the hood, even if you’re not a
Page 131 and 132: “But who did this belong to?” I
Page 133 and 134: “Hey, let’s make a deal. We’l
Page 135 and 136: Everyone must know that your succes
Page 137 and 138: e a whole lot harder for an investm
Page 139: O nce, when I was ten years old, vi
Page 143 and 144: me aside and told me what I was in
Page 145 and 146: first night, everyone was giving me
Page 147 and 148: couldn’t afford anything but a st
Page 149 and 150: “I-I’m not fine, Your Honor. I
Page 151 and 152: M y favorite thing to eat as a kid,
Page 153 and 154: could lift car engines and gearboxe
Page 155 and 156: Xhosa woman no less, a culture whos
Page 157 and 158: “Respect?! You almost burned down
Page 159 and 160: She gives and gives and gives; that
Page 161 and 162: on it as well. Clients were getting
Page 163 and 164: Bramley, three neighborhoods away,
Page 165 and 166: wouldn’t happen again, but it was
Page 167 and 168: “This is all I can do,” she sai
Page 169 and 170: “Where are you now?” I said.
Page 171 and 172: times he pulled the trigger, and fo
Page 173 and 174: emergency room to give us an update
Page 175 and 176: W hen my mother was shot, so much h
Page 177 and 178: For my mother. My first fan. Thank
Page 179 and 180: ABOUT THE AUTHOR TREVOR NOAH is a c
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