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

“My mother was—and still is—a deeply religious woman. Very Christian. Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By ‘adopt,’ I mean it was forced on us.”

One of Patricia’s defining characteristics is her religiosity. While Trevor Noah recognizes and does not invalidate this, he does recognize that the presence of Christianity in South African communities is a product of colonialism. Historically, Christian European countries saw it as their duty to spread their religion, often by force or violence.

“The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called ‘the bloodless revolution.’ It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets.”

Noah points out the hypocrisy of how people address apartheid and how racial logic infuses retrospective discussions of apartheid. The common epithet “the bloodless revolution” is a misnomer, because of the violence visited upon Black and Colored folks both throughout apartheid and during its long dissolution. This nickname has racist implications for the value of Black lives.

“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 immoral and unfaithful. And here was my mother, his tribal enemy, a Xhosa woman alone with two small children—one of them a mixed child, no less. ‘Oh, you’re a Xhosa,’ he said. ‘That explains it. Disgusting woman. Tonight you’re going to learn your lesson.’”

One of the tools of apartheid was building animosity between different African tribes. One of the most prominent rivalries is between the Xhosa and Zulu, which are both Bantu-speaking tribes. Noah describes how the stereotypes and hatred built by the apartheid regime put him and his mother in a life-or-death situation when they get in a minibus driven by a Zulu man.