Comparison and contrast between driverless cars and/or traditionally driven cars.

Description

Produce a complete 2 page paper in which you do a comparison and contrast between driverless cars and/or traditionally driven cars. Be sure to define your reason for writing (thesis), and treat both ideas equally as to pros and cons, costs to promote, validity, efficiency to use, probability of success, and manpower requirements, etc. Your paper should contain an introductory paragraph, thesis statement , body paragraphs each supporting a major idea regarding your point for writing, and a concluding paragraph to wrap-up the paper and signal the completion of your support for your reason for writing.

Although actual research is not a part of this assignment, provide a brief statement at the beginning of the assignment explaining how you would have gone about finding and providing support for your paper.

 

 

Copyright © 2016 by Trevor NoahAll rights reserved.Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of PenguinRandom House LLC, New York.SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Noah, Trevor, author.Title: Born a crime: stories from a South African childhood / by Trevor Noah.Description: First edition. | New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2016.Identifiers: LCCN 2016031399| ISBN 9780399588174 | ISBN 9780399590443 (international) | ISBN9780399588181 (ebook)Subjects: LCSH: Noah, Trevor | Comedians—United States—Biography. | Comedians—South Africa—Biography. | Television personalities—United States—Biography.Classification: LCC PN2287.N557 A3 2016 | DDC 791.4502/8092 [B]—dc23 LC record available athttps://lccn.loc.gov/​2016031399Ebook ISBN 9780399588181spiegelandgrau.comBook design by Susan Turner, adapted for ebookCover design: Greg MollicaCover image: Mark Stutzman, based on a photograph by Kwaku Alston (Trevor Noah); Getty Images(background)v4.1ep

ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightImmorality Act, 1927Part IChapter 1: RunChapter 2: Born a CrimeChapter 3: Trevor, PrayChapter 4: ChameleonChapter 5: The Second GirlChapter 6: LoopholesChapter 7: FufiChapter 8: RobertPart IIChapter 9: The Mulberry TreeChapter 10: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and FrequentlyHumiliating Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part I: Valentine’s DayChapter 11: OutsiderChapter 12: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and FrequentlyHumiliating Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part II: The CrushChapter 13: ColorblindChapter 14: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and FrequentlyHumiliating Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part III: The DancePart IIIChapter 15: Go Hitler!Chapter 16: The Cheese BoysChapter 17: The World Doesn’t Love YouChapter 18: My Mother’s LifeDedicationAcknowledgments

About the Author

IMMORALITY ACT, 1927To prohibit illicit carnal intercourse between Europeansand natives and other acts in relation thereto.BE IT ENACTED by the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, the Senate and the House ofAssembly of the Union of South Africa, as follows:—1. Any European male who has illicit carnal intercourse with a native female, and anynative male who has illicit carnal intercourse with a European female…shall be guilty of anoffence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years.2. Any native female who permits any European male to have illicit carnal intercoursewith her and any European female who permits any native male to have illicit carnalintercourse with her shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonmentfor a period not exceeding four years….

 

The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turnon each other. Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hateone another so you can run them all.At the time, black South Africans outnumbered white South Africans nearly five to one, yetwe were divided into different tribes with different languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho,Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi, and more. Long before apartheid existed these tribal factionsclashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to divide andconquer. All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups.Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them atodds.Perhaps the starkest of these divisions was between South Africa’s two dominant groups,the Zulu and the Xhosa. The Zulu man is known as the warrior. He is proud. He puts his headdown and fights. When the colonial armies invaded, the Zulu charged into battle with nothingbut spears and shields against men with guns. The Zulu were slaughtered by the thousands,but they never stopped fighting. The Xhosa, on the other hand, pride themselves on being thethinkers. My mother is Xhosa. Nelson Mandela was Xhosa. The Xhosa waged a long waragainst the white man as well, but after experiencing the futility of battle against a better-armed foe, many Xhosa chiefs took a more nimble approach. “These white people are herewhether we like it or not,” they said. “Let’s see what tools they possess that can be useful to us.Instead of being resistant to English, let’s learn English. We’ll understand what the white manis saying, and we can force him to negotiate with us.”The Zulu went to war with the white man. The Xhosa played chess with the white man. Fora long time neither was particularly successful, and each blamed the other for a problemneither had created. Bitterness festered. For decades those feelings were held in check by acommon enemy. Then apartheid fell, Mandela walked free, and black South Africa went to warwith itself.

RUNSometimes in big Hollywood movies they’ll have these crazy chase scenes wheresomebody jumps or gets thrown from a moving car. The person hits the groundand rolls for a bit. Then they come to a stop and pop up and dust themselves off,like it was no big deal. Whenever I see that I think, That’s rubbish. Getting thrownout of a moving car hurts way worse than that.I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car. Ithappened on a Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because we were coming homefrom church, and every Sunday in my childhood meant church. We never missedchurch. My mother was—and still is—a deeply religious woman. Very Christian.Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted thereligion of our colonizers. By “adopt” I mean it was forced on us. The white manwas quite stern with the native. “You need to pray to Jesus,” he said. “Jesus willsave you.” To which the native replied, “Well, we do need to be saved—saved fromyou, but that’s beside the point. So let’s give this Jesus thing a shot.”My whole family is religious, but where my mother was Team Jesus all theway, my grandmother balanced her Christian faith with the traditional Xhosabeliefs she’d grown up with, communicating with the spirits of our ancestors. Fora long time I didn’t understand why so many black people had abandoned theirindigenous faith for Christianity. But the more we went to church and the longer Isat in those pews the more I learned about how Christianity works: If you’reNative American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African andyou pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to aguy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.My childhood involved church, or some form of church, at least four nights aweek. Tuesday night was the prayer meeting. Wednesday night was Bible study.Thursday night was Youth church. Friday and Saturday we had off. (Time to sin!)Then on Sunday we went to church. Three churches, to be precise. The reason wewent to three churches was because my mom said each church gave her somethingdifferent. The first church offered jubilant praise of the Lord. The second churchoffered deep analysis of the scripture, which my mom loved. The third churchoffered passion and catharsis; it was a place where you truly felt the presence ofthe Holy Spirit inside you. Completely by coincidence, as we moved back and forth

between these churches, I noticed that each one had its own distinct racialmakeup: Jubilant church was mixed church. Analytical church was white church.And passionate, cathartic church, that was black church.Mixed church was Rhema Bible Church. Rhema was one of those huge,supermodern, suburban megachurches. The pastor, Ray McCauley, was an ex-bodybuilder with a big smile and the personality of a cheerleader. Pastor Ray hadcompeted in the 1974 Mr. Universe competition. He placed third. The winner thatyear was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Every week, Ray would be up onstage workingreally hard to make Jesus cool. There was arena-style seating and a rock bandjamming out with the latest Christian contemporary pop. Everyone sang along,and if you didn’t know the words that was okay because they were all right upthere on the Jumbotron for you. It was Christian karaoke, basically. I always had ablast at mixed church.White church was Rosebank Union in Sandton, a very white and wealthy partof Johannesburg. I loved white church because I didn’t actually have to go to themain service. My mom would go to that, and I would go to the youth side, toSunday school. In Sunday school we got to read cool stories. Noah and the floodwas obviously a favorite; I had a personal stake there. But I also loved the storiesabout Moses parting the Red Sea, David slaying Goliath, Jesus whipping themoney changers in the temple.I grew up in a home with very little exposure to popular culture. Boyz II Menwere not allowed in my mother’s house. Songs about some guy grinding on a girlall night long? No, no, no. That was forbidden. I’d hear the other kids at schoolsinging “End of the Road,” and I’d have no clue what was going on. I knew of theseBoyz II Men, but I didn’t really know who they were. The only music I knew wasfrom church: soaring, uplifting songs praising Jesus. It was the same with movies.My mom didn’t want my mind polluted by movies with sex and violence. So theBible was my action movie. Samson was my superhero. He was my He-Man. A guybeating a thousand people to death with the jawbone of a donkey? That’s prettybadass. Eventually you get to Paul writing letters to the Ephesians and it loses theplot, but the Old Testament and the Gospels? I could quote you anything fromthose pages, chapter and verse. There were Bible games and quizzes every week atwhite church, and I kicked everyone’s ass.Then there was black church. There was always some kind of black churchservice going on somewhere, and we tried them all. In the township, that typicallymeant an outdoor, tent-revival-style church. We usually went to mygrandmother’s church, an old-school Methodist congregation, five hundredAfrican grannies in blue-and-white blouses, clutching their Bibles and patientlyburning in the hot African sun. Black church was rough, I won’t lie. No air-conditioning. No lyrics up on Jumbotrons. And it lasted forever, three or fourhours at least, which confused me because white church was only like an hour—inand out, thanks for coming. But at black church I would sit there for what felt like

an eternity, trying to figure out why time moved so slowly. Is it possible for time toactually stop? If so, why does it stop at black church and not at white church? Ieventually decided black people needed more time with Jesus because we sufferedmore. “I’m here to fill up on my blessings for the week,” my mother used to say.The more time we spent at church, she reckoned, the more blessings we accrued,like a Starbucks Rewards Card.Black church had one saving grace. If I could make it to the third or fourthhour I’d get to watch the pastor cast demons out of people. People possessed bydemons would start running up and down the aisles like madmen, screaming intongues. The ushers would tackle them, like bouncers at a club, and hold themdown for the pastor. The pastor would grab their heads and violently shake themback and forth, shouting, “I cast out this spirit in the name of Jesus!” Somepastors were more violent than others, but what they all had in common was thatthey wouldn’t stop until the demon was gone and the congregant had gone limpand collapsed on the stage. The person had to fall. Because if he didn’t fall thatmeant the demon was powerful and the pastor needed to come at him evenharder. You could be a linebacker in the NFL. Didn’t matter. That pastor wastaking you down. Good Lord, that was fun.Christian karaoke, badass action stories, and violent faith healers—man, Iloved church. The thing I didn’t love was the lengths we had to go to in order toget to church. It was an epic slog. We lived in Eden Park, a tiny suburb wayoutside Johannesburg. It took us an hour to get to white church, another forty-fiveminutes to get to mixed church, and another forty-five minutes to drive out toSoweto for black church. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, some Sundays we’ddouble back to white church for a special evening service. By the time we finallygot home at night, I’d collapse into bed.This particular Sunday, the Sunday I was hurled from a moving car, startedout like any other Sunday. My mother woke me up, made me porridge forbreakfast. I took my bath while she dressed my baby brother Andrew, who wasnine months old. Then we went out to the driveway, but once we were finally allstrapped in and ready to go, the car wouldn’t start. My mom had this ancient,broken-down, bright-tangerine Volkswagen Beetle that she picked up for next tonothing. The reason she got it for next to nothing was because it was alwaysbreaking down. To this day I hate secondhand cars. Almost everything that’s evergone wrong in my life I can trace back to a secondhand car. Secondhand carsmade me get detention for being late for school. Secondhand cars left ushitchhiking on the side of the freeway. A secondhand car was also the reason mymom got married. If it hadn’t been for the Volkswagen that didn’t work, we neverwould have looked for the mechanic who became the husband who became thestepfather who became the man who tortured us for years and put a bullet in theback of my mother’s head—I’ll take the new car with the warranty every time.As much as I loved church, the idea of a nine-hour slog, from mixed church to

white church to black church then doubling back to white church again, was justtoo much to contemplate. It was bad enough in a car, but taking public transportwould be twice as long and twice as hard. When the Volkswagen refused to start,inside my head I was praying, Please say we’ll just stay home. Please say we’ll juststay home. Then I glanced over to see the determined look on my mother’s face,her jaw set, and I knew I had a long day ahead of me.“Come,” she said. “We’re going to catch minibuses.”—My mother is as stubborn as she is religious. Once her mind’s made up, that’s it.Indeed, obstacles that would normally lead a person to change their plans, like acar breaking down, only made her more determined to forge ahead.“It’s the Devil,” she said about the stalled car. “The Devil doesn’t want us to goto church. That’s why we’ve got to catch minibuses.”Whenever I found myself up against my mother’s faith-based obstinacy, Iwould try, as respectfully as possible, to counter with an opposing point of view.“Or,” I said, “the Lord knows that today we shouldn’t go to church, which iswhy he made sure the car wouldn’t start, so that we stay at home as a family andtake a day of rest, because even the Lord rested.”“Ah, that’s the Devil talking, Trevor.”“No, because Jesus is in control, and if Jesus is in control and we pray toJesus, he would let the car start, but he hasn’t, therefore—”“No, Trevor! Sometimes Jesus puts obstacles in your way to see if youovercome them. Like Job. This could be a test.”“Ah! Yes, Mom. But the test could be to see if we’re willing to accept what hashappened and stay at home and praise Jesus for his wisdom.”“No. That’s the Devil talking. Now go change your clothes.”“But, Mom!”“Trevor! Sun’qhela!”Sun’qhela is a phrase with many shades of meaning. It says “don’t undermineme,” “don’t underestimate me,” and “just try me.” It’s a command and a threat, allat once. It’s a common thing for Xhosa parents to say to their kids. Any time Iheard it I knew it meant the conversation was over, and if I uttered another word Iwas in for a hiding—what we call a spanking.At the time, I attended a private Catholic school called Maryvale College. Iwas the champion of the Maryvale sports day every single year, and my motherwon the moms’ trophy every single year. Why? Because she was always chasingme to kick my ass, and I was always running not to get my ass kicked. Nobody ranlike me and my mom. She wasn’t one of those “Come over here and get your

hiding” type moms. She’d deliver it to you free of charge. She was a thrower, too.Whatever was next to her was coming at you. If it was something breakable, I hadto catch it and put it down. If it broke, that would be my fault, too, and the ass-kicking would be that much worse. If she threw a vase at me, I’d have to catch it,put it down, and then run. In a split second, I’d have to think, Is it valuable? Yes.Is it breakable? Yes. Catch it, put it down, now run.We had a very Tom and Jerry relationship, me and my mom. She was thestrict disciplinarian; I was naughty as shit. She would send me out to buygroceries, and I wouldn’t come right home because I’d be using the change fromthe milk and bread to play arcade games at the supermarket. I loved videogames. Iwas a master at Street Fighter. I could go forever on a single play. I’d drop a coinin, time would fly, and the next thing I knew there’d be a woman behind me with abelt. It was a race. I’d take off out the door and through the dusty streets of EdenPark, clambering over walls, ducking through backyards. It was a normal thing inour neighborhood. Everybody knew: That Trevor child would come through like abat out of hell, and his mom would be right there behind him. She could go at afull sprint in high heels, but if she really wanted to come after me she had thisthing where she’d kick her shoes off while still going at top speed. She’d do thisweird move with her ankles and the heels would go flying and she wouldn’t evenmiss a step. That’s when I knew, Okay, she’s in turbo mode now.When I was little she always caught me, but as I got older I got faster, andwhen speed failed her she’d use her wits. If I was about to get away she’d yell,“Stop! Thief!” She’d do this to her own child. In South Africa, nobody gets involvedin other people’s business—unless it’s mob justice, and then everybody wants in.So she’d yell “Thief!” knowing it would bring the whole neighborhood out againstme, and then I’d have strangers trying to grab me and tackle me, and I’d have toduck and dive and dodge them as well, all the while screaming, “I’m not a thief!I’m her son!”The last thing I wanted to do that Sunday morning was climb into somecrowded minibus, but the second I heard my mom say sun’qhela I knew my fatewas sealed. She gathered up Andrew and we climbed out of the Volkswagen andwent out to try to catch a ride.—I was five years old, nearly six, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Iremember seeing it on TV and everyone being happy. I didn’t know why we werehappy, just that we were. I was aware of the fact that there was a thing calledapartheid and it was ending and that was a big deal, but I didn’t understand theintricacies of it.What I do remember, what I will never forget, is the violence that followed.The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called the BloodlessRevolution. It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black bloodran in the streets.

As the apartheid regime fell, we knew that the black man was now going torule. The question was, which black man? Spates of violence broke out betweenthe Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC, the African National Congress, as theyjockeyed for power. The political dynamic between these two groups was verycomplicated, but the simplest way to understand it is as a proxy war between Zuluand Xhosa. The Inkatha was predominantly Zulu, very militant and verynationalistic. The ANC was a broad coalition encompassing many different tribes,but its leaders at the time were primarily Xhosa. Instead of uniting for peace theyturned on one another, committing acts of unbelievable savagery. Massive riotsbroke out. Thousands of people were killed. Necklacing was common. That’swhere people would hold someone down and put a rubber tire over his torso,pinning his arms. Then they’d douse him with petrol and set him on fire and burnhim alive. The ANC did it to Inkatha. Inkatha did it to the ANC. I saw one of thosecharred bodies on the side of the road one day on my way to school. In theevenings my mom and I would turn on our little black-and-white TV and watchthe news. A dozen people killed. Fifty people killed. A hundred people killed.Eden Park sat not far from the sprawling townships of the East Rand,Thokoza and Katlehong, which were the sites of some of the most horrificInkatha–ANC clashes. Once a month at least we’d drive home and theneighborhood would be on fire. Hundreds of rioters in the street. My mom wouldedge the car slowly through the crowds and around blockades made of flamingtires. Nothing burns like a tire—it rages with a fury you can’t imagine. As we drovepast the burning blockades, it felt like we were inside an oven. I used to say to mymom, “I think Satan burns tires in Hell.”Whenever the riots broke out, all our neighbors would wisely hole up behindclosed doors. But not my mom. She’d head straight out, and as we’d inch our waypast the blockades, she’d give the rioters this look. Let me pass. I’m not involvedin this shit. She was unwavering in the face of danger. That always amazed me. Itdidn’t matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places tobe. It was the same stubbornness that kept her going to church despite a broken-down car. There could be five hundred rioters with a blockade of burning tires onthe main road out of Eden Park, and my mother would say, “Get dressed. I’ve gotto go to work. You’ve got to go to school.”“But aren’t you afraid?” I’d say. “There’s only one of you and there’s so manyof them.”“Honey, I’m not alone,” she’d say. “I’ve got all of Heaven’s angels behind me.”“Well, it would be nice if we could see them,” I’d say. “Because I don’t thinkthe rioters know they’re there.”She’d tell me not to worry. She always came back to the phrase she lived by:“If God is with me, who can be against me?” She was never scared. Even when sheshould have been.

—That carless Sunday we made our circuit of churches, ending up, as usual, at whitechurch. When we walked out of Rosebank Union it was dark and we were alone. Ithad been an endless day of minibuses from mixed church to black church to whitechurch, and I was exhausted. It was nine o’clock at least. In those days, with all theviolence and riots going on, you did not want to be out that late at night. We werestanding at the corner of Jellicoe Avenue and Oxford Road, right in the heart ofJohannesburg’s wealthy, white suburbia, and there were no minibuses. The streetswere empty.I so badly wanted to turn to my mom and say, “You see? This is why Godwanted us to stay home.” But one look at the expression on her face, and I knewbetter than to speak. There were times I could talk smack to my mom—this wasnot one of them.We waited and waited for a minibus to come by. Under apartheid thegovernment provided no public transportation for blacks, but white people stillneeded us to show up to mop their floors and clean their bathrooms. Necessitybeing the mother of invention, black people created their own transit system, aninformal network of bus routes, controlled by private associations operatingentirely outside the law. Because the minibus business was completelyunregulated, it was basically organized crime. Different groups ran differentroutes, and they would fight over who controlled what. There was bribery andgeneral shadiness that went on, a great deal of violence, and a lot of protectionmoney paid to avoid violence. The one thing you didn’t do was steal a route from arival group. Drivers who stole routes would get killed. Being unregulated,minibuses were also very unreliable. When they came, they came. When theydidn’t, they didn’t.Standing outside Rosebank Union, I was literally falling asleep on my feet.Not a minibus in sight. Eventually my mother said, “Let’s hitchhike.” We walkedand walked, and after what felt like an eternity, a car drove up and stopped. Thedriver offered us a ride, and we climbed in. We hadn’t gone ten feet whensuddenly a minibus swerved right in front of the car and cut us off.A Zulu driver got out with an iwisa, a large, traditional Zulu weapon—a warclub, basically. They’re used to smash people’s skulls in. Another guy, his crony,got out of the passenger side. They walked up to the driver’s side of the car wewere in, grabbed the man who’d offered us a ride, pulled him out, and startedshoving their clubs in his face. “Why are you stealing our customers? Why are youpicking people up?”It looked like they were going to kill this guy. I knew that happenedsometimes. My mom spoke up. “Hey, listen, he was just helping me. Leave him.We’ll ride with you. That’s what we wanted in the first place.” So we got out of thefirst car and climbed into the minibus.

We were the only passengers in the minibus. In addition to being violentgangsters, South African minibus drivers are notorious for complaining andharanguing passengers as they drive. This driver was a particularly angry one. Aswe rode along, he started lecturing my mother about being in a car with a manwho was not her husband. My mother didn’t suffer lectures from strange men. Shetold him to mind his own business, and when he heard her speaking in Xhosa, thatreally set him off. The stereotypes of Zulu and Xhosa women were as ingrained asthose of the men. Zulu women were well-behaved and dutiful. Xhosa women werepromiscuous and unfaithful. And here was my mother, his tribal enemy, a Xhosawoman alone with two small children—one of them a mixed child, no less. Not justa whore but a whore who sleeps with white men. “Oh, you’re a Xhosa,” he said.“That explains it. Climbing into strange men’s cars. Disgusting woman.”My mom kept telling him off and he kept calling her names, yelling at herfrom the front seat, wagging his finger in the rearview mirror and growing moreand more menacing until finally he said, “That’s the problem with you Xhosawomen. You’re all sluts—and tonight you’re going to learn your lesson.”He sped off. He was driving fast, and he wasn’t stopping, only slowing downto check for traffic at the intersections before speeding through. Death was neverfar away from anybody back then. At that point my mother could be raped. Wecould be killed. These were all viable options. I didn’t fully comprehend the dangerwe were in at the moment; I was so tired that I just wanted to sleep. Plus my momstayed very calm. She didn’t panic, so I didn’t know to panic. She just kept tryingto reason with him.“I’m sorry if we’ve upset you, bhuti. You can just let us out here—”“No.”“Really, it’s fine. We can just walk—”“No.”He raced along Oxford Road, the lanes empty, no other cars out. I was sittingclosest to the minibus’s sliding door. My mother sat next to me, holding babyAndrew. She looked out the window at the passing road and then leaned over tome and whispered, “Trevor, when he slows down at the next intersection, I’mgoing to open the door and we’re going to jump.”I didn’t hear a word of what she was saying, because by that point I’dcompletely nodded off. When we came to the next traffic light, the driver eased offthe gas a bit to look around and check the road. My mother reached over, pulledthe sliding door open, grabbed me, and threw me out as far as she could. Then shetook Andrew, curled herself in a ball around him, and leaped out behind me.It felt like a dream until the pain hit. Bam! I smacked hard on the pavement.My mother landed right beside me and we tumbled and tumbled and rolled androlled. I was wide awake now. I went from half asleep to What the hell?!

Eventually I came to a stop and pulled myself up, completely disoriented. I lookedaround and saw my mother, already on her feet. She turned and looked at me andscreamed.“Run!”So I ran, and she ran, and nobody ran like me and my mom.It’s weird to explain, but I just knew what to do. It was animal instinct,learned in a world where violence was always lurking and waiting to erupt. In thetownships, when the police came swooping in with their riot gear and armoredcars and helicopters, I knew: Run for cover. Run and hide. I knew that as a five-year-old. Had I lived a different life, getting thrown out of a speeding minibusmight have fazed me. I’d have stood there like an idiot, going, “What’s happening,Mom? Why are my legs so sore?” But there was none of that. Mom said “run,” andI ran. Like the gazelle runs from the lion, I ran.The men stopped the minibus and got out and tried to chase us, but theydidn’t stand a chance. We smoked them. I think they were in shock. I stillremember glancing back and seeing them give up with a look of utterbewilderment on their faces. What just happened? Who’d have thought a womanwith two small children could run so fast? They didn’t know they were dealingwith the reigning champs of the Maryvale College sports day. We kept going andgoing until we made it to a twenty-four-hour petrol station and called the police.By then the men were long gone.I still didn’t know why any of this had happened; I’d been running on pureadrenaline. Once we stopped running I realized how much pain I was in. I lookeddown, and the skin on my arms was scraped and torn. I was cut up and bleedingall over. Mom was, too. My baby brother was fine, though, incredibly. My momhad wrapped herself around him, and he’d come through without a scratch. Iturned to her in shock.“What was that?! Why are we running?!”“What do you mean, ‘Why are we running?’ Those men were trying to kill us.”“You never told me that! You just threw me out of the car!”“I did tell you. Why didn’t you jump?”“Jump?! I was asleep!”“So I should have left you there for them to kill you?”“At least they would have woken me up before they killed me.”Back and forth we went. I was too confused and too angry about gettingthrown out of the car to realize what had happened. My mother had saved my life.As we caught our breath and waited for the police to come and drive us home,she said, “Well, at least we’re safe, thank God.”

But I was nine years old and I knew better. I wasn’t going to keep quiet thistime.“No, Mom! This was not thanks to God! You should have listened to Godwhen he told us to stay at home when the car wouldn’t start, because clearly theDevil tricked us into coming out tonight.”“No, Trevor! That’s not how the Devil works. This is part of God’s plan, and ifHe wanted us here then He had a reason…”And on and on and there we were, back at it, arguing about God’s will. FinallyI said, “Look, Mom. I know you love Jesus, but maybe next week you could askhim to meet us at our house. Because this really wasn’t a fun night.”She broke out in a huge smile and started laughing. I started laughing, too,and we stood there, this little boy and his mom, our arms and legs covered inblood and dirt, laughing together through the pain in the light of a petrol stationon the side of the road in the middle of the night.

Apartheid was perfect racism. It took centuries to develop, starting all the way back in 1652when the Dutch East India Company landed at the Cape of Good Hope and established atrading colony, Kaapstad, later known as Cape Town, a rest stop for ships traveling betweenEurope and India. To impose white rule, the Dutch colonists went to war with the natives,ultimately developing a set of laws to subjugate and enslave them. When the British took overthe Cape Colony, the descendants of the original Dutch settlers trekked inland and developedtheir own language, culture, and customs, eventually becoming their own people, theAfrikaners—the white tribe of Africa.The British abolished slavery in name but kept it in practice. They did so because, in themid-1800s, in what had been written off as a near-worthless way station on the route to theFar East, a few lucky capitalists stumbled upon the richest gold and diamond reserves in theworld, and an endless supply of expendable bodies was needed to go in the ground and get itall out.As the British Empire fell, the Afrikaner rose up to claim South Africa as his rightfulinheritance. To maintain power in the face of the country’s rising and restless black majority,the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools. They set up aformal commission to go out and study institutionalized racism all over the world. They wentto Australia. They went to the Netherlands. They went to America. They saw what worked,what didn’t. Then they came back and published a report, and the government used thatknowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man.Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep blackpeople under total control. A full compendium of those laws would run more than threethousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should beeasy enough for any American to understand. In America you had the forced removal of thenative onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three ofthose things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.

BORN A CRIMEI grew up in South Africa during apartheid, which was awkward because I wasraised in a mixed family, with me being the mixed one in the family. My mother,Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is black. My father, Robert, is white. Swiss/German,to be precise, which Swiss/Germans invariably are. During apartheid, one of theworst crimes you could commit was having sexual relations with a person ofanother race. Needless to say, my parents committed that crime.In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merelychallenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable andincoherent. Race-mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases, want tomix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system,race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.Humans being humans and sex being sex, that prohibition never stoppedanyone. There were mixed kids in South Africa nine months after the first Dutchboats hit the beach in Table Bay. Just like in America, the colonists here had theirway with the native women, as colonists so often do. Unlike in America, whereanyone with one drop of black blood automatically became black, in South Africamixed people came to be classified as their own separate group, neither black norwhite but what we call “colored.” Colored people, black people, white people, andIndian people were forced to register their race with the government. Based onthose classifications, millions of people were uprooted and relocated. Indian areaswere segregated from colored areas, which were segregated from black areas—allof them segregated from white areas and separated from one another by bufferzones of empty land. Laws were passed prohibiting sex between Europeans andnatives, laws that were later amended to prohibit sex between whites and allnonwhites.The government went to insane lengths to try to enforce these new laws. Thepenalty for breaking them was five years in prison. There were whole policesquads whose only job was to go around peeking through windows—clearly anassignment for only the finest law enforcement officers. And if an interracialcouple got caught, God help them. The police would kick down the door, drag thepeople out, beat them, arrest them. At least that’s what they did to the blackperson. With the white person it was more like, “Look, I’ll just say you were drunk,

but don’t do it again, eh? Cheers.” That’s how it was with a white man and a blackwoman. If a black man was caught having sex with a white woman, he’d be lucky ifhe wasn’t charged with rape.If you ask my mother whether she ever considered the ramifications of havinga mixed child under apartheid, she will say no. She wanted to do something,figured out a way to do it, and then she did it. She had a level of fearlessness thatyou have to possess to take on something like she did. If you stop to consider theramifications, you’ll never do anything. Still, it was a crazy, reckless thing to do. Amillion things had to go right for us to slip through the cracks the way we did foras long as we did.—Under apartheid, if you were a black man you worked on a farm or in a factory orin a mine. If you were a black woman, you worked in a factory or as a maid. Thosewere pretty much your only options. My mother didn’t want to work in a factory.She was a horrible cook and never would have stood for some white lady tellingher what to do all day. So, true to her nature, she found an option that was notamong the ones presented to her: She took a secretarial course, a typing class. Atthe time, a black woman learning how to type was like a blind person learning howto drive. It’s an admirable effort, but you’re unlikely to ever be called upon toexecute the task. By law, white-collar jobs and skilled-labor jobs were reserved forwhites. Black people didn’t work in offices. My mom, however, was a rebel, and,fortunately for her, her rebellion came along at the right moment.In the early 1980s, the South African government began making minorreforms in an attempt to quell international protest over the atrocities and humanrights abuses of apartheid. Among those reforms was the token hiring of blackworkers in low-level white-collar jobs. Like typists. Through an employmentagency she got a job as a secretary at ICI, a multinational pharmaceutical companyin Braamfontein, a suburb of Johannesburg.When my mom started working, she still lived with my grandmother inSoweto, the township where the government had relocated my family decadesbefore. But my mother was unhappy at home, and when she was twenty-two sheran away to live in downtown Johannesburg. There was only one problem: It wasillegal for black people to live there.The ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country, withevery black person stripped of his or her citizenship and relocated to live in thehomelands, the Bantustans, semi-sovereign black territories that were in realitypuppet states of the government in Pretoria. But this so-called white country couldnot function without black labor to produce its wealth, which meant black peoplehad to be allowed to live near white areas in the townships, government-plannedghettos built to house black workers, like Soweto. The township was where youlived, but your status as a laborer was the only thing that permitted you to staythere. If your papers were revoked for any reason, you could be deported back to

the homelands.To leave the township for work in the city, or for any other reason, you had tocarry a pass with your ID number; otherwise you could be arrested. There was alsoa curfew: After a certain hour, blacks had to be back home in the township or riskarrest. My mother didn’t care. She was determined to never go home again. So shestayed in town, hiding and sleeping in public restrooms until she learned the rulesof navigating the city from the other black women who had contrived to live there:prostitutes.Many of the prostitutes in town were Xhosa. They spoke my mother’slanguage and showed her how to survive. They taught her how to dress up in apair of maid’s overalls to move around the city without being questioned. Theyalso introduced her to white men who were willing to rent out flats in town. A lotof these men were foreigners, Germans and Portuguese who didn’t care about thelaw and were happy to sign a lease giving a prostitute a place to live and work inexchange for a steady piece on the side. My mom wasn’t interested in any sucharrangement, but thanks to her job she did have money to pay rent. She met aGerman fellow through one of her prostitute friends, and he agreed to let her a flatin his name. She moved in and bought a bunch of maid’s overalls to wear. She wascaught and arrested many times, for not having her ID on the way home fromwork, for being in a white area after hours. The penalty for violating the pass lawswas thirty days in jail or a fine of fifty rand, nearly half her monthly salary. Shewould scrape together the money, pay the fine, and go right back about herbusiness.—My mom’s secret flat was in a neighborhood called Hillbrow. She lived in number203. Down the corridor was a tall, brown-haired, brown-eyed Swiss/Germanexpat named Robert. He lived in 206. As a former trading colony, South Africa hasalways had a large expatriate community. People find their way here. Tons ofGermans. Lots of Dutch. Hillbrow at the time was the Greenwich Village of SouthAfrica. It was a thriving scene, cosmopolitan and liberal. There were galleries andunderground theaters where artists and performers dared to speak up andcriticize the government in front of integrated crowds. There were restaurants andnightclubs, a lot of them foreign-owned, that served a mixed clientele, blackpeople who hated the status quo and white people who simply thought itridiculous. These people would have secret get-togethers, too, usually insomeone’s flat or in empty basements that had been converted into clubs.Integration by its nature was a political act, but the get-togethers themselvesweren’t political at all. People would meet up and hang out, have parties.My mom threw herself into that scene. She was always out at some club, someparty, dancing, meeting people. She was a regular at the Hillbrow Tower, one ofthe tallest buildings in Africa at that time. It had a nightclub with a rotating dancefloor on the top floor. It was an exhilarating time but still dangerous. Sometimes

the restaurants and clubs would get shut down, sometimes not. Sometimes theperformers and patrons would get arrested, sometimes not. It was a roll of thedice. My mother never knew whom to trust, who might turn her in to the police.Neighbors would report on one another. The girlfriends of the white men in mymom’s block of flats had every reason to report a black woman—a prostitute, nodoubt—living among them. And you must remember that black people worked forthe government as well. As far as her white neighbors knew, my mom could havebeen a spy posing as a prostitute posing as a maid, sent into Hillbrow to inform onwhites who were breaking the law. That’s how a police state works—everyonethinks everyone else is the police.Living alone in the city, not being trusted and not being able to trust, mymother started spending more and more time in the company of someone withwhom she felt safe: the tall Swiss man down the corridor in 206. He was forty-six.She was twenty-four. He was quiet and reserved; she was wild and free. She wouldstop by his flat to chat; they’d go to underground get-togethers, go dancing at thenightclub with the rotating dance floor. Something clicked.I know that there was a genuine bond and a love between my parents. I saw it.But how romantic their relationship was, to what extent they were just friends, Ican’t say. These are things a child doesn’t ask. All I do know is that one day shemade her proposal.“I want to have a kid,” she told him.“I don’t want kids,” he said.“I didn’t ask you to have a kid. I asked you to help me to have my kid. I justwant the sperm from you.”“I’m Catholic,” he said. “We don’t do such things.”“You do know,” she replied, “that I could sleep with you and go away and youwould never know if you had a child or not. But I don’t want that. Honor me withyour yes so that I can live peacefully. I want a child of my own, and I want it fromyou. You will be able to see it as much as you like, but you will have no obligations.You don’t have to talk to it. You don’t have to pay for it. Just make this child forme.”For my mother’s part, the fact that this man didn’t particularly want a familywith her, was prevented by law from having a family with her, was part of theattraction. She wanted a child, not a man stepping in to run her life. For myfather’s part, I know that for a long time he kept saying no. Eventually he said yes.Why he said yes is a question I will never have the answer to.Nine months after that yes, on February 20, 1984, my mother checked intoHillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery. Estranged from her family,pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone. Thedoctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and

pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes,and regulations—I was born a crime.—When the doctors pulled me out there was an awkward moment where they said,“Huh. That’s a very light-skinned baby.” A quick scan of the delivery roomrevealed no man standing around to take credit.“Who is the father?” they asked.“His father is from Swaziland,” my mother said, referring to the tiny,landlocked kingdom in the west of South Africa.They probably knew she was lying, but they accepted it because they neededan explanation. Under apartheid, the government labeled everything on your birthcertificate: race, tribe, nationality. Everything had to be categorized. My motherlied and said I was born in KaNgwane, the semi-sovereign homeland for Swazipeople living in South Africa. So my birth certificate doesn’t say that I’m Xhosa,which technically I am. And it doesn’t say that I’m Swiss, which the governmentwouldn’t allow. It just says that I’m from another country.My father isn’t on my birth certificate. Officially, he’s never been my father.And my mother, true to her word, was prepared for him not to be involved. She’drented a new flat for herself in Joubert Park, the neighborhood adjacent toHillbrow, and that’s where she took me when she left the hospital. The next weekshe went to visit him, with no baby. To her surprise, he asked where I was. “Yousaid that you didn’t want to be involved,” she said. And he hadn’t, but once Iexisted he realized he couldn’t have a son living around the corner and not be apart of my life. So the three of us formed a kind of family, as much as our peculiarsituation would allow. I lived with my mom. We’d sneak around and visit my dadwhen we could.Where most children are proof of their parents’ love, I was the proof of theircriminality. The only time I could be with my father was indoors. If we left thehouse, he’d have to walk across the street from us. My mom and I used to go toJoubert Park all the time. It’s the Central Park of Johannesburg—beautifulgardens, a zoo, a giant chessboard with human-sized pieces that people wouldplay. My mother tells me that once, when I was a toddler, my dad tried to go withus. We were in the park, he was walking a good bit away from us, and I ran afterhim, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” People started looking. He panicked andran away. I thought it was a game and kept chasing him.I couldn’t walk with my mother, either; a light-skinned child with a blackwoman would raise too many questions. When I was a newborn, she could wrapme up and take me anywhere, but very quickly that was no longer an option. I wasa giant baby, an enormous child. When I was one you’d have thought I was two.When I was two, you’d have thought I was four. There was no way to hide me.

My mom, same as she’d done with her flat and with her maid’s uniforms,found the cracks in the system. It was illegal to be mixed (to have a black parentand a white parent), but it was not illegal to be colored (to have two parents whowere both colored). So my mom moved me around the world as a colored child.She found a crèche in a colored area where she could leave me while she was atwork. There was a colored woman named Queen who lived in our block of flats.When we wanted to go out to the park, my mom would invite her to go with us.Queen would walk next to me and act like she was my mother, and my motherwould walk a few steps behind, like she was the maid working for the coloredwoman. I’ve got dozens of pictures of me walking with this woman who looks likeme but who isn’t my mother. And the black woman standing behind us who lookslike she’s photobombing the picture, that’s my mom. When we didn’t have acolored woman to walk with us, my mom would risk walking me on her own. Shewould hold my hand or carry me, but if the police showed up she would have todrop me and pretend I wasn’t hers, like I was a bag of weed.When I was born, my mother hadn’t seen her family in three years, but shewanted me to know them and wanted them to know me, so the prodigal daughterreturned. We lived in town, but I would spend weeks at a time with mygrandmother in Soweto, often during the holidays. I have so many memories fromthe place that in my mind it’s like we lived there, too.Soweto was designed to be bombed—that’s how forward-thinking thearchitects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a populationof nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so themilitary could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazyand tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shitout of everyone. Growing up, I never knew that my grandmother lived in thecenter of a bull’s-eye.In the city, as difficult as it was to get around, we managed. Enough peoplewere out and about, black, white, and colored, going to and from work, that wecould get lost in the crowd. But only black people were permitted in Soweto. It wasmuch harder to hide someone who looked like me, and the government waswatching much more closely. In the white areas you rarely saw the police, and ifyou did it was Officer Friendly in his collared shirt and pressed pants. In Sowetothe police were an occupying army. They didn’t wear collared shirts. They woreriot gear. They were militarized. They operated in teams known as flying squads,because they would swoop in out of nowhere, riding in armored personnel carriers—hippos, we called them—tanks with enormous tires and slotted holes in the sideof the vehicle to fire their guns out of. You didn’t mess with a hippo. You saw one,you ran. That was a fact of life. The township was in a constant state ofinsurrection; someone was always marching or protesting somewhere and had tobe suppressed. Playing in my grandmother’s house, I’d hear gunshots, screams,tear gas being fired into crowds.

My memories of the hippos and the flying squads come from when I was fiveor six, when apartheid was finally coming apart. I never saw the police before that,because we could never risk the police seeing me. Whenever we went to Soweto,my grandmother refused to let me outside. If she was watching me it was, “No, no,no. He doesn’t leave the house.” Behind the wall, in the yard, I could play, but notin the street. And that’s where the rest of the boys and girls were playing, in thestreet. My cousins, the neighborhood kids, they’d open the gate and head out androam free and come back at dusk. I’d beg my grandmother to go outside.“Please. Please, can I go play with my cousins?”“No! They’re going to take you!”For the longest time I thought she meant that the other kids were going tosteal me, but she was talking about the police. Children could be taken. Childrenwere taken. The wrong color kid in the wrong color area, and the governmentcould come in, strip your parents of custody, haul you off to an orphanage. Topolice the townships, the government relied on its network of impipis, theanonymous snitches who’d inform on suspicious activity. There were also theblackjacks, black people who worked for the police. My grandmother’s neighborwas a blackjack. She had to make sure he wasn’t watching when she smuggled mein and out of the house.My gran still tells the story of when I was three years old and, fed up withbeing a prisoner, I dug a hole under the gate in the driveway, wriggled through,and ran off. Everyone panicked. A search party went out and tracked me down. Ihad no idea how much danger I was putting everyone in. The family could havebeen deported, my gran could have been arrested, my mom might have gone toprison, and I probably would have been packed off to a home for colored kids.So I was kept inside. Other than those few instances of walking in the park,the flashes of memory I have from when I was young are almost all indoors, mewith my mom in her tiny flat, me by myself at my gran’s. I didn’t have any friends.I didn’t know any kids besides my cousins. I wasn’t a lonely kid—I was good atbeing alone. I’d read books, play with the toy that I had, make up imaginaryworlds. I lived inside my head. I still live inside my head. To this day you can leaveme alone for hours and I’m perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have toremember to be with people.—Obviously, I was not the only child born to black and white parents duringapartheid. Traveling around the world today, I meet other mixed South Africansall the time. Our stories start off identically. We’re around the same age. Theirparents met at some underground party in Hillbrow or Cape Town. They lived inan illegal flat. The difference is that in virtually every other case they left. Thewhite parent smuggled them out through Lesotho or Botswana, and they grew upin exile, in England or Germany or Switzerland, because being a mixed family

under apartheid was just that unbearable.Once Mandela was elected we could finally live freely. Exiles started to return.I met my first one when I was around seventeen. He told me his story, and I waslike, “Wait, what? You mean we could have left? That was an option?” Imaginebeing thrown out of an airplane. You hit the ground and break all your bones, yougo to the hospital and you heal and you move on and finally put the whole thingbehind you—and then one day somebody tells you about parachutes. That’s how Ifelt. I couldn’t understand why we’d stayed. I went straight home and asked mymom.“Why? Why didn’t we just leave? Why didn’t we go to Switzerland?”“Because I am not Swiss,” she said, as stubborn as ever. “This is my country.Why should I leave?”

South Africa is a mix of the old and the new, the ancient and the modern, and South AfricanChristianity is a perfect example of this. We adopted the religion of our colonizers, but mostpeople held on to the old ancestral ways, too, just in case. In South Africa, faith in the HolyTrinity exists quite comfortably alongside belief in witchcraft, in casting spells and puttingcurses on one’s enemies.I come from a country where people are more likely to visit sangomas—shamans,traditional healers, pejoratively known as witch doctors—than they are to visit doctors ofWestern medicine. I come from a country where people have been arrested and tried forwitchcraft—in a court of law. I’m not talking about the 1700s. I’m talking about five years ago. Iremember a man being on trial for striking another person with lightning. That happens a lotin the homelands. There are no tall buildings, few tall trees, nothing between you and the sky,so people get hit by lightning all the time. And when someone gets killed by lightning, everyoneknows it’s because somebody used Mother Nature to take out a hit. So if you had a beef withthe guy who got killed, someone will accuse you of murder and the police will come knocking.“Mr. Noah, you’ve been accused of murder. You used witchcraft to kill David Kibuuka bycausing him to be struck by lightning.”“What is the evidence?”“The evidence is that David Kibuuka got struck by lightning and it wasn’t even raining.”And you go to trial. The court is presided over by a judge. There is a docket. There is aprosecutor. Your defense attorney has to prove lack of motive, go through the crime-sceneforensics, present a staunch defense. And your attorney’s argument can’t be “Witchcraft isn’treal.” No, no, no. You’ll lose.

TREVOR, PRAYI grew up in a world run by women. My father was loving and devoted, but I couldonly see him when and where apartheid allowed. My uncle Velile, my mom’syounger brother, lived with my grandmother, but he spent most of his time at thelocal tavern getting into fights.The only semi-regular male figure in my life was my grandfather, my mother’sfather, who was a force to be reckoned with. He was divorced from mygrandmother and didn’t live with us, but he was around. His name wasTemperance Noah, which was odd since he was not a man of moderation at all. Hewas boisterous and loud. His nickname in the neighborhood was “Tat Shisha,”which translates loosely to “the smokin’ hot grandpa.” And that’s exactly who hewas. He loved the ladies, and the ladies loved him. He’d put on his best suit andstroll through the streets of Soweto on random afternoons, making everybodylaugh and charming all the women he’d meet. He had a big, dazzling smile withbright white teeth—false teeth. At home, he’d take them out and I’d watch him dothat thing where he looked like he was eating his own face.We found out much later in life that he was bipolar, but before that we justthought he was eccentric. One time he borrowed my mother’s car to go to the shopfor milk and bread. He disappeared and didn’t come home until late that nightwhen we were way past the point of needing the milk or the bread. Turned outhe’d passed a young woman at the bus stop and, believing no beautiful womanshould have to wait for a bus, he offered her a ride to where she lived—three hoursaway. My mom was furious with him because he’d cost us a whole tank of petrol,which was enough to get us to work and school for two weeks.When he was up you couldn’t stop him, but his mood swings were wild. In hisyouth he’d been a boxer, and one day he said I’d disrespected him and now hewanted to box me. He was in his eighties. I was twelve. He had his fists up, circlingme. “Let’s go, Trevah! Come on! Put your fists up! Hit me! I’ll show you I’m still aman! Let’s go!” I couldn’t hit him because I wasn’t about to hit my elder. Plus I’dnever been in a fight and I wasn’t going to have my first one be with an eighty-year-old man. I ran to my mom, and she got him to stop. The day after hispugilistic rage, he sat in his chair and didn’t move or say a word all day.

Temperance lived with his second family in the Meadowlands, and we visitedthem sparingly because my mom was always afraid of being poisoned. Which wasa thing that would happen. The first family were the heirs, so there was always thechance they might get poisoned by the second family. It was like Game of Throneswith poor people. We’d go into that house and my mom would warn me.“Trevor, don’t eat the food.”“But I’m starving.”“No. They might poison us.”“Okay, then why don’t I just pray to Jesus and Jesus will take the poison outof the food?”“Trevor! Sun’qhela!”So I only saw my grandfather now and then, and when he was gone the housewas in the hands of women.In addition to my mom there was my aunt Sibongile; she and her firsthusband, Dinky, had two kids, my cousins Mlungisi and Bulelwa. Sibongile was apowerhouse, a strong woman in every sense, big-chested, the mother hen. Dinky,as his name implies, was dinky. He was a small man. He was abusive, but notreally. It was more like he tried to be abusive, but he wasn’t very good at it. He wastrying to live up to this image of what he thought a husband should be, dominant,controlling. I remember being told as a child, “If you don’t hit your woman, youdon’t love her.” That was the talk you’d hear from men in bars and in the streets.Dinky was trying to masquerade as this patriarch that he wasn’t. He’d slap myaunt and hit her and she’d take it and take it, and then eventually she’d snap andsmack him down and put him back in his place. Dinky would always walk aroundlike, “I control my woman.” And you’d want to say, “Dinky, first of all, you don’t.Second of all, you don’t need to. Because she loves you.” I can remember one daymy aunt had really had enough. I was in the yard and Dinky came running out ofthe house screaming bloody murder. Sibongile was right behind him with a pot ofboiling water, cursing at him and threatening to douse him with it. In Soweto youwere always hearing about men getting doused with pots of boiling water—often awoman’s only recourse. And men were lucky if it was water. Some women usedhot cooking oil. Water was if the woman wanted to teach her man a lesson. Oilmeant she wanted to end it.My grandmother Frances Noah was the family matriarch. She ran the house,looked after the kids, did the cooking and the cleaning. She’s barely five feet tall,hunched over from years in the factory, but rock hard and still to this day veryactive and very much alive. Where my grandfather was big and boisterous, mygrandmother was calm, calculating, with a mind as sharp as anything. If you needto know anything in the family history, going back to the 1930s, she can tell youwhat day it happened, where it happened, and why it happened. She remembers it

all.My great-grandmother lived with us as well. We called her Koko. She wassuper old, well into her nineties, stooped and frail, completely blind. Her eyes hadgone white, clouded over by cataracts. She couldn’t walk without someone holdingher up. She’d sit in the kitchen next to the coal stove, bundled up in long skirts andhead scarves, blankets over her shoulders. The coal stove was always on. It was forcooking, heating the house, heating water for baths. We put her there because itwas the warmest spot in the house. In the morning someone would wake her andbring her to sit in the kitchen. At night someone would come take her to bed.That’s all she did, all day, every day. Sit by the stove. She was fantastic and fullywith it. She just couldn’t see and didn’t move.Koko and my gran would sit and have long conversations, but as a five-year-old I didn’t think of Koko as a real person. Since her body didn’t move, she waslike a brain with a mouth. Our relationship was nothing but command promptsand replies, like talking to a computer.“Good morning, Koko.”“Good morning, Trevor.”“Koko, did you eat?”“Yes, Trevor.”“Koko, I’m going out.”“Okay, be careful.”“Bye, Koko.”“Bye, Trevor.”—The fact that I grew up in a world run by women was no accident. Apartheid keptme away from my father because he was white, but for almost all the kids I knewon my grandmother’s block in Soweto, apartheid had taken away their fathers aswell, just for different reasons. Their fathers were off working in a minesomewhere, able to come home only during the holidays. Their fathers had beensent to prison. Their fathers were in exile, fighting for the cause. Women held thecommunity together. “Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo!” was the chant theywould rally to during the freedom struggle. “When you strike a woman, you strikea rock.” As a nation, we recognized the power of women, but in the home theywere expected to submit and obey.In Soweto, religion filled the void left by absent men. I used to ask my mom ifit was hard for her to raise me alone without a husband. She’d reply, “Just becauseI live without a man doesn’t mean I’ve never had a husband. God is my husband.”For my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, and all the other women on our street,life centered on faith. Prayer meetings would rotate houses up and down the block

based on the day. These groups were women and children only. My mom wouldalways ask my uncle Velile to join, and he’d say, “I would join if there were moremen, but I can’t be the only one here.” Then the singing and praying would start,and that was his cue to leave.For these prayer meetings, we’d jam ourselves into the tiny living area of thehost family’s house and form a circle. Then we would go around the circle offeringprayers. The grannies would talk about what was happening in their lives. “I’mhappy to be here. I had a good week at work. I got a raise and I wanted to saythank you and praise Jesus.” Sometimes they’d pull out their Bible and say, “Thisscripture spoke to me and maybe it will help you.” Then there would be a bit ofsong. There was a leather pad called “the beat” that you’d strap to your palm, like apercussion instrument. Someone would clap along on that, keeping time whileeveryone sang, “Masango vulekani singene eJerusalema. Masango vulekanisingene eJerusalema.”That’s how it would go. Pray, sing, pray. Sing, pray, sing. Sing, sing, sing.Pray, pray, pray. Sometimes it would last for hours, always ending with an“amen,” and they could keep that “amen” going on for five minutes at least. “Ah-men. Ah-ah-ah-men. Ah-ah-ah-ah-men. Ahhhhhhhhahhhhh​hhhhh​-hahhhhhahhhhhhahhhhhmen. Meni-meni-meni. Men-men-men. Ahhhhh​hhhhh​-hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhmmmmmmmennnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​-nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​-nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​-n.” Then everyone would say goodbye and go home. Next night, different house,same thing.Tuesday nights, the prayer meeting came to my grandmother’s house, and Iwas always excited, for two reasons. One, I got to clap along on the beat for thesinging. And two, I loved to pray. My grandmother always told me that she lovedmy prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, because I prayed inEnglish. Everyone knows that Jesus, who’s white, speaks English. The Bible is inEnglish. Yes, the Bible was not written in English, but the Bible came to SouthAfrica in English so to us it’s in English. Which made my prayers the best prayersbecause English prayers get answered first. How do we know this? Look at whitepeople. Clearly they’re getting through to the right person. Add to that Matthew19:14. “Suffer little children to come unto me,” Jesus said, “for theirs is thekingdom of heaven.” So if a child is praying in English? To White Jesus? That’s apowerful combination right there. Whenever I prayed, my grandmother wouldsay, “That prayer is going to get answered. I can feel it.”Women in the township always had something to pray for—money problems,a son who’d been arrested, a daughter who was sick, a husband who drank.Whenever the prayer meetings were at our house, because my prayers were sogood, my grandmother would want me to pray for everyone. She would turn to meand say, “Trevor, pray.” And I’d pray. I loved doing it. My grandmother had

convinced me that my prayers got answered. I felt like I was helping people.—There is something magical about Soweto. Yes, it was a prison designed by ouroppressors, but it also gave us a sense of self-determination and control. Sowetowas ours. It had an aspirational quality that you don’t find elsewhere. In Americathe dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leavingthe ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto.For the million people who lived in Soweto, there were no stores, no bars, norestaurants. There were no paved roads, minimal electricity, inadequate sewerage.But when you put one million people together in one place, they find a way tomake a life for themselves. A black-market economy rose up, with every type ofbusiness being run out of someone’s house: auto mechanics, day care, guys sellingrefurbished tires.The most common were the spaza shops and the shebeens. The spaza shopswere informal grocery stores. People would build a kiosk in their garage, buywholesale bread and eggs, and then resell them piecemeal. Everyone in thetownship bought things in minute quantities because nobody had any money. Youcouldn’t afford to buy a dozen eggs at a time, but you could buy two eggs becausethat’s all you needed that morning. You could buy a quarter loaf of bread, a cup ofsugar. The shebeens were unlawful bars in the back of someone’s house. They’dput chairs in their backyard and hang out an awning and run a speakeasy. Theshebeens were where men would go to drink after work and during prayermeetings and most any other time of day as well.People built homes the way they bought eggs: a little at a time. Every family inthe township was allocated a piece of land by the government. You’d first build ashanty on your plot, a makeshift structure of plywood and corrugated iron. Overtime, you’d save up money and build a brick wall. One wall. Then you’d save upand build another wall. Then, years later, a third wall and eventually a fourth. Nowyou had a room, one room for everyone in your family to sleep, eat, do everything.Then you’d save up for a roof. Then windows. Then you’d plaster the thing. Thenyour daughter would start a family. There was nowhere for them to go, so they’dmove in with you. You’d add another corrugated-iron structure onto your brickroom and slowly, over years, turn that into a proper room for them as well. Nowyour house had two rooms. Then three. Maybe four. Slowly, over generations,you’d keep trying to get to the point where you had a home.My grandmother lived in Orlando East. She had a two-room house. Not atwo-bedroom house. A two-room house. There was a bedroom, and then there wasbasically a living room/kitchen/everything-else room. Some might say we livedlike poor people. I prefer “open plan.” My mom and I would stay there duringschool holidays. My aunt and cousins would be there whenever she was on theouts with Dinky. We all slept on the floor in one room, my mom and me, my auntand my cousins, my uncle and my grandmother and my great-grandmother. The

adults each had their own foam mattresses, and there was one big one that we’droll out into the middle, and the kids slept on that.We had two shanties in the backyard that my grandmother would rent out tomigrants and seasonal workers. We had a small peach tree in a tiny patch on oneside of the house and on the other side my grandmother had a driveway. I neverunderstood why my grandmother had a driveway. She didn’t have a car. She didn’tknow how to drive. Yet she had a driveway. All of our neighbors had driveways,some with fancy, cast-iron gates. None of them had cars, either. There was nofuture in which most of these families would ever have cars. There was maybe onecar for every thousand people, yet almost everyone had a driveway. It was almostlike building the driveway was a way of willing the car to happen. The story ofSoweto is the story of the driveways. It’s a hopeful place.—Sadly, no matter how fancy you made your house, there was one thing you couldnever aspire to improve: your toilet. There was no indoor running water, just onecommunal outdoor tap and one outdoor toilet shared by six or seven houses. Ourtoilet was in a corrugated-iron outhouse shared among the adjoining houses.Inside, there was a concrete slab with a hole in it and a plastic toilet seat on top;there had been a lid at some point, but it had broken and disappeared long ago.We couldn’t afford toilet paper, so on the wall next to the seat was a wire hangerwith old newspaper on it for you to wipe. The newspaper was uncomfortable, butat least I stayed informed while I handled my business.The thing that I couldn’t handle about the outhouse was the flies. It was along drop to the bottom, and they were always down there, eating on the pile, andI had an irrational, all-consuming fear that they were going to fly up and into mybum.One afternoon, when I was around five years old, my gran left me at home fora few hours to go run errands. I was lying on the floor in the bedroom, reading. Ineeded to go, but it was pouring down rain. I was dreading going outside to usethe toilet, getting drenched running out there, water dripping on me from theleaky ceiling, wet newspaper, the flies attacking me from below. Then I had anidea. Why bother with the outhouse at all? Why not put some newspaper on thefloor and do my business like a puppy? That seemed like a fantastic idea. So that’swhat I did. I took the newspaper, laid it out on the kitchen floor, pulled down mypants, and squatted and got to it.When you shit, as you first sit down, you’re not fully in the experience yet.You are not yet a shitting person. You’re transitioning from a person about to shitto a person who is shitting. You don’t whip out your smartphone or a newspaperright away. It takes a minute to get the first shit out of the way and get in the zoneand get comfortable. Once you reach that moment, that’s when it gets really nice.It’s a powerful experience, shitting. There’s something magical about it,

profound even. I think God made humans shit in the way we do because it bringsus back down to earth and gives us humility. I don’t care who you are, we all shitthe same. Beyoncé shits. The pope shits. The Queen of England shits. When weshit we forget our airs and our graces, we forget how famous or how rich we are.All of that goes away.You are never more yourself than when you’re taking a shit. You have thatmoment where you realize, This is me. This is who I am. You can pee withoutgiving it a second thought, but not so with shitting. Have you ever looked in ababy’s eyes when it’s shitting? It’s having a moment of pure self-awareness. Theouthouse ruins that for you. The rain, the flies, you are robbed of your moment,and nobody should be robbed of that. Squatting and shitting on the kitchen floorthat day, I was like, Wow. There are no flies. There’s no stress. This is reallygreat. I’m really enjoying this. I knew I’d made an excellent choice, and I was veryproud of myself for making it. I’d reached that moment where I could relax and bewith myself. Then I casually looked around the room and I glanced to my left andthere, just a few feet away, right next to the coal stove, was Koko.It was like the scene in Jurassic Park when the children turn and the T. rex isright there. Her eyes were wide open, cloudy white and darting around the room. Iknew she couldn’t see me, but her nose was starting to crinkle—she could sensethat something was wrong.I panicked. I was mid-shit. All you can do when you’re mid-shit is finishshitting. My only option was to finish as quietly and as slowly as I could, so that’swhat I decided to do. Then: the softest plop of a little-boy turd on the newspaper.Koko’s head snapped toward the sound.“Who’s there? Hallo? Hallo?!”I froze. I held my breath and waited.“Who’s there?! Hallo?!”I kept quiet, waited, then started again.“Is somebody there?! Trevor, is that you?! Frances? Hallo? Hallo?”She started calling out the whole family. “Nombuyiselo? Sibongile? Mlungisi?Bulelwa? Who’s there? What’s happening?”It was like a game, like I was trying to hide and a blind woman was trying tofind me using sonar. Every time she called out, I froze. There would be completesilence. “Who’s there?! Hallo?!” I’d pause, wait for her to settle back in her chair,and then I’d start up again.Finally, after what felt like forever, I finished. I stood up, took the newspaper—which is not the quietest thing—and I slowwwwwly folded it over. It crinkled.“Who’s there?” Again I paused, waited. Then I folded it over some more, walkedover to the rubbish bin, placed my sin at the bottom, and gingerly covered it withthe rest of the trash. Then I tiptoed back to the other room, curled up on the

mattress on the floor, and pretended to be asleep. The shit was done, no outhouseinvolved, and Koko was none the wiser.Mission accomplished.—An hour later the rain had stopped. My grandmother came home. The second shewalked in, Koko called out to her.“Frances! Thank God you’re here. There’s something in the house.”“What was it?”“I don’t know, but I could hear it, and there was a smell.”My gran started sniffing the air. “Dear Lord! Yes, I can smell it, too. Is it a rat?Did something die? It’s definitely in the house.”They went back and forth about it, quite concerned, and then, as it wasgetting dark, my mother came home from work. The second she walked in, mygran called out to her.“Oh, Nombuyiselo! Nombuyiselo! There’s something in the house!”“What?! What do you mean?”Koko told her the story, the sounds, the smells.Then my mom, who has a keen sense of smell, started going around thekitchen, sniffing. “Yes, I can smell it. I can find it…I can find it…” She went to therubbish bin. “It’s in here.” She lifted out the rubbish, pulled out the foldednewspaper underneath, and opened it up, and there was my little turd. Sheshowed it to gran.“Look!”“What?! How did it get there?!”Koko, still blind, still stuck in her chair, was dying to know what washappening.“What’s going on?!” she cried. “What’s going on?! Did you find it?!”“It’s shit,” Mom said. “There’s shit in the bottom of the dustbin.”“But how?!” Koko said. “There was no one here!”“Are you sure there was no one here?”“Yes. I called out to everyone. Nobody came.”My mother gasped. “We’ve been bewitched! It’s a demon!”For my mother, this was the logical conclusion. Because that’s how witchcraftworks. If someone has put a curse on you or your home, there is always thetalisman or totem, a tuft of hair or the head of a cat, the physical manifestation of

the spiritual thing, proof of the demon’s presence.Once my mom found the turd, all hell broke loose. This was serious. They hadevidence. She came into the bedroom.“Trevor! Trevor! Wake up!”“What?!” I said, playing dumb. “What’s going on?!”“Come! There’s a demon in the house!”She took my hand and dragged me out of bed. It was all hands on deck, timefor action. The first thing we had to do was go outside and burn the shit. That’swhat you do with witchcraft; the only way to destroy it is to burn the physicalthing. We went out to the yard, and my mom put the newspaper with my little turdon the driveway, lit a match, and set it on fire. Then my mom and my gran stoodaround the burning shit, praying and singing songs of praise.The commotion didn’t stop there because when there’s a demon around, thewhole community has to join together to drive it out. If you’re not part of theprayer, the demon might leave our house and go to your house and curse you. Sowe needed everyone. The alarm was raised. The call went out. My tiny old granwas out the gate, going up and down the block, calling to all the other old granniesfor an emergency prayer meeting. “Come! We’ve been bewitched!”I stood there, my shit burning in the driveway, my poor aged grandmothertottering up and down the street in a panic, and I didn’t know what to do. I knewthere was no demon, but there was no way I could come clean. The hiding I wouldhave to endure? Good Lord. Honesty was never the best policy when it came to ahiding. I kept quiet.Moments later the grannies came streaming in with their Bibles, through thegate and up the driveway, a dozen or more at least. Everyone went inside. Thehouse was packed. This was by far the biggest prayer meeting we’d ever had—thebiggest thing that had ever happened in the history of our home, period. Everyonesat in the circle, praying and praying, and the prayers were strong. The grannieswere chanting and murmuring and swaying back and forth, speaking in tongues. Iwas doing my best to keep my head low and stay out of it. Then my grandmotherreached back and grabbed me, pulled me into the middle of the circle, and lookedinto my eyes.“Trevor, pray.”“Yes!” my mother said. “Help us! Pray, Trevor. Pray to God to kill thedemon!”I was terrified. I believed in the power of prayer. I knew that my prayersworked. So if I prayed to God to kill the thing that left the shit, and the thing thatleft the shit was me, then God was going to kill me. I froze. I didn’t know what todo. But all the grannies were looking at me, waiting for me to pray, so I prayed,stumbling through as best I could.

“Dear Lord, please protect us, um, you know, from whoever did thisbut, like, we don’t know what happened exactly and maybe it was abig misunderstanding and, you know, maybe we shouldn’t be quickto judge when we don’t know the whole story and, I mean, of courseyou know best, Heavenly Father, but maybe this time it wasn’tactually a demon, because who can say for certain, so maybe cutwhoever it was a break…”It was not my best performance. Eventually I wrapped it up and sat backdown. The praying continued. It went on for some time. Pray, sing, pray. Sing,pray, sing. Sing, sing, sing. Pray, pray, pray. Then everyone finally felt that thedemon was gone and life could continue, and we had the big “amen” and everyonesaid good night and went home.That night I felt terrible. Before bed, I quietly prayed, “God, I am so sorry forall of this. I know this was not cool.” Because I knew: God answers your prayers.God is your father. He’s the man who’s there for you, the man who takes care ofyou. When you pray, He stops and He takes His time and He listens, and I hadsubjected Him to two hours of old grannies praying when I knew that with all thepain and suffering in the world He had more important things to deal with thanmy shit.

When I was growing up we used to get American TV shows rebroadcast on our stations:Doogie Howser, M.D.; Murder, She Wrote; Rescue 911 with William Shatner. Most of themwere dubbed into African languages. ALF was in Afrikaans. Transformers was in Sotho. But ifyou wanted to watch them in English, the original American audio would be simulcast on theradio. You could mute your TV and listen to that. Watching those shows, I realized thatwhenever black people were on-screen speaking in African languages, they felt familiar to me.They sounded like they were supposed to sound. Then I’d listen to them in simulcast on theradio, and they would all have black American accents. My perception of them changed. Theydidn’t feel familiar. They felt like foreigners.Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A sharedlanguage says “We’re the same.” A language barrier says “We’re different.” The architects ofapartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we wereseparated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were onlytaught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana.Because of this, we’d fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight amongourselves, believing that we were different.The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite:convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of thecolor of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meetsomeone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he can’t speak like you reinforces your racistpreconceptions: He’s different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the borderfrom Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, “Eh, I don’ttrust this guy.”“But he’s a scientist.”“In Mexican science, maybe. I don’t trust him.”However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuitsbecause your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. “Wait, wait,” yourmind says, “the racism code says if he doesn’t look like me he isn’t like me, but the languagecode says if he speaks like me he…is like me? Something is off here. I can’t figure this out.”

CHAMELEONOne afternoon I was playing with my cousins. I was a doctor and they were mypatients. I was operating on my cousin Bulelwa’s ear with a set of matches when Iaccidentally perforated her eardrum. All hell broke loose. My grandmother camerunning in from the kitchen. “Kwenzeka ntoni?!” “What’s happening?!” There wasblood coming out of my cousin’s head. We were all crying. My grandmotherpatched up Bulelwa’s ear and made sure to stop the bleeding. But we kept crying.Because clearly we’d done something we were not supposed to do, and we knewwe were going to be punished. My grandmother finished up with Bulelwa’s earand whipped out a belt and she beat the shit out of Bulelwa. Then she beat the shitout of Mlungisi, too. She didn’t touch me.Later that night my mother came home from work. She found my cousin witha bandage over her ear and my gran crying at the kitchen table.“What’s going on?” my mom said.“Oh, Nombuyiselo,” she said. “Trevor is so naughty. He’s the naughtiest childI’ve ever come across in my life.”“Then you should hit him.”“I can’t hit him.”“Why not?”“Because I don’t know how to hit a white child,” she said. “A black child, Iunderstand. A black child, you hit them and they stay black. Trevor, when you hithim he turns blue and green and yellow and red. I’ve never seen those colorsbefore. I’m scared I’m going to break him. I don’t want to kill a white person. I’mso afraid. I’m not going to touch him.” And she never did.My grandmother treated me like I was white. My grandfather did, too, only hewas even more extreme. He called me “Mastah.” In the car, he insisted on drivingme as if he were my chauffeur. “Mastah must always sit in the backseat.” I neverchallenged him on it. What was I going to say? “I believe your perception of race isflawed, Grandfather.” No. I was five. I sat in the back.There were so many perks to being “white” in a black family, I can’t even

front. I was having a great time. My own family basically did what the Americanjustice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids.Misbehavior that my cousins would have been punished for, I was given a warningand let off. And I was way naughtier than either of my cousins. It wasn’t evenclose. If something got broken or if someone was stealing granny’s cookies, it wasme. I was trouble.My mom was the only force I truly feared. She believed if you spare the rod,you spoil the child. But everyone else said, “No, he’s different,” and they gave me apass. Growing up the way I did, I learned how easy it is for white people to getcomfortable with a system that awards them all the perks. I knew my cousins weregetting beaten for things that I’d done, but I wasn’t interested in changing mygrandmother’s perspective, because that would mean I’d get beaten, too. Whywould I do that? So that I’d feel better? Being beaten didn’t make me feel better. Ihad a choice. I could champion racial justice in our home, or I could enjoygranny’s cookies. I went with the cookies.—At that point I didn’t think of the special treatment as having to do with color. Ithought of it as having to do with Trevor. It wasn’t, “Trevor doesn’t get beatenbecause Trevor is white.” It was, “Trevor doesn’t get beaten because Trevor isTrevor.” Trevor can’t go outside. Trevor can’t walk without supervision. It’sbecause I’m me; that’s why this is happening. I had no other points of reference.There were no other mixed kids around so that I could say, “Oh, this happens tous.”Nearly one million people lived in Soweto. Ninety-nine point nine percent ofthem were black—and then there was me. I was famous in my neighborhood justbecause of the color of my skin. I was so unique people would give directions usingme as a landmark. “The house on Makhalima Street. At the corner you’ll see alight-skinned boy. Take a right there.”Whenever the kids in the street saw me they’d yell, “Indoda yomlungu!” “Thewhite man!” Some of them would run away. Others would call out to their parentsto come look. Others would run up and try to touch me to see if I was real. It waspandemonium. What I didn’t understand at the time was that the other kidsgenuinely had no clue what a white person was. Black kids in the township didn’tleave the township. Few people had televisions. They’d seen the white police rollthrough, but they’d never dealt with a white person face-to-face, ever.I’d go to funerals and I’d walk in and the bereaved would look up and see meand they’d stop crying. They’d start whispering. Then they’d wave and say, “Oh!”like they were more shocked by me walking in than by the death of their lovedones. I think people felt like the dead person was more important because a whiteperson had come to the funeral.After a funeral, the mourners all go to the house of the surviving family to eat.

A hundred people might show up, and you’ve got to feed them. Usually you get acow and slaughter it and your neighbors come over and help you cook. Neighborsand acquaintances eat outside in the yard and in the street, and the family eatsindoors. Every funeral I ever went to, I ate indoors. It didn’t matter if we knew thedeceased or not. The family would see me and invite me in. “Awunakuvumelaumntana womlungu ame ngaphandle. Yiza naye apha ngaphakathi,” they’d say.“You can’t let the white child stand outside. Bring him in here.”As a kid I understood that people were different colors, but in my head whiteand black and brown were like types of chocolate. Dad was the white chocolate,mom was the dark chocolate, and I was the milk chocolate. But we were all justchocolate. I didn’t know any of it had anything to do with “race.” I didn’t knowwhat race was. My mother never referred to my dad as white or to me as mixed. Sowhen the other kids in Soweto called me “white,” even though I was light brown, Ijust thought they had their colors mixed up, like they hadn’t learned themproperly. “Ah, yes, my friend. You’ve confused aqua with turquoise. I can see howyou made that mistake. You’re not the first.”I soon learned that the quickest way to bridge the race gap was throughlanguage. Soweto was a melting pot: families from different tribes and homelands.Most kids in the township spoke only their home language, but I learned severallanguages because I grew up in a house where there was no option but to learnthem. My mom made sure English was the first language I spoke. If you’re black inSouth Africa, speaking English is the one thing that can give you a leg up. Englishis the language of money. English comprehension is equated with intelligence. Ifyou’re looking for a job, English is the difference between getting the job orstaying unemployed. If you’re standing in the dock, English is the differencebetween getting off with a fine or going to prison.After English, Xhosa was what we spoke around the house. When my motherwas angry she’d fall back on her home language. As a naughty child, I was wellversed in Xhosa threats. They were the first phrases I picked up, mostly for myown safety—phrases like “Ndiza kubetha entloko.” “I’ll knock you upside thehead.” Or “Sidenge ndini somntwana.” “You idiot of a child.” It’s a very passionatelanguage. Outside of that, my mother picked up different languages here andthere. She learned Zulu because it’s similar to Xhosa. She spoke German becauseof my father. She spoke Afrikaans because it is useful to know the language of youroppressor. Sotho she learned in the streets.Living with my mom, I saw how she used language to cross boundaries,handle situations, navigate the world. We were in a shop once, and theshopkeeper, right in front of us, turned to his security guard and said, inAfrikaans, “Volg daai swartes, netnou steel hulle iets.” “Follow those blacks incase they steal something.”My mother turned around and said, in beautiful, fluent Afrikaans, “Hoekomvolg jy nie daai swartes sodat jy hulle kan help kry waarna hulle soek nie?” “Why

don’t you follow these blacks so you can help them find what they’re looking for?”“Ag, jammer!” he said, apologizing in Afrikaans. Then—and this was thefunny thing—he didn’t apologize for being racist; he merely apologized for aiminghis racism at us. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I thought you were like the otherblacks. You know how they love to steal.”I learned to use language like my mother did. I would simulcast—give you theprogram in your own tongue. I’d get suspicious looks from people just walkingdown the street. “Where are you from?” they’d ask. I’d reply in whatever languagethey’d addressed me in, using the same accent that they used. There would be abrief moment of confusion, and then the suspicious look would disappear. “Oh,okay. I thought you were a stranger. We’re good then.”It became a tool that served me my whole life. One day as a young man I waswalking down the street, and a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me, closingin on me, and I could hear them talking to one another about how they were goingto mug me. “Asibambe le autie yomlungu. Phuma ngapha mina ngizoqhamukangemuva kwakhe.” “Let’s get this white guy. You go to his left, and I’ll come upbehind him.” I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run, so I just spun around realquick and said, “Kodwa bafwethu yingani singavele sibambe umuntu inkunzi?Asenzeni. Mina ngikulindele.” “Yo, guys, why don’t we just mug someonetogether? I’m ready. Let’s do it.”They looked shocked for a moment, and then they started laughing. “Oh,sorry, dude. We thought you were something else. We weren’t trying to takeanything from you. We were trying to steal from white people. Have a good day,man.” They were ready to do me violent harm, until they felt we were part of thesame tribe, and then we were cool. That, and so many other smaller incidents inmy life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you areto people.I became a chameleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change yourperception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If youspoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t look like you,but if I spoke like you, I was you.—As apartheid was coming to an end, South Africa’s elite private schools startedaccepting children of all colors. My mother’s company offered bursaries,scholarships, for underprivileged families, and she managed to get me intoMaryvale College, an expensive private Catholic school. Classes taught by nuns.Mass on Fridays. The whole bit. I started preschool there when I was three,primary school when I was five.In my class we had all kinds of kids. Black kids, white kids, Indian kids,colored kids. Most of the white kids were pretty well off. Every child of color prettymuch wasn’t. But because of scholarships we all sat at the same table. We wore the

same maroon blazers, the same gray slacks and skirts. We had the same books. Wehad the same teachers. There was no racial separation. Every clique was raciallymixed.Kids still got teased and bullied, but it was over usual kid stuff: being fat orbeing skinny, being tall or being short, being smart or being dumb. I don’tremember anybody being teased about their race. I didn’t learn to put limits onwhat I was supposed to like or not like. I had a wide berth to explore myself. I hadcrushes on white girls. I had crushes on black girls. Nobody asked me what I was. Iwas Trevor.It was a wonderful experience to have, but the downside was that it shelteredme from reality. Maryvale was an oasis that kept me from the truth, a comfortableplace where I could avoid making a tough decision. But the real world doesn’t goaway. Racism exists. People are getting hurt, and just because it’s not happeningto you doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And at some point, you have to choose.Black or white. Pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, “Oh, I don’tpick sides,” but at some point life will force you to pick a side.At the end of grade six I left Maryvale to go to H. A. Jack Primary, agovernment school. I had to take an aptitude test before I started, and, based onthe results of the test, the school counselor told me, “You’re going to be in thesmart classes, the A classes.” I showed up for the first day of school and went tomy classroom. Of the thirty or so kids in my class, almost all of them were white.There was one Indian kid, maybe one or two black kids, and me.Then recess came. We went out on the playground, and black kids wereeverywhere. It was an ocean of black, like someone had opened a tap and all theblack had come pouring out. I was like, Where were they all hiding? The whitekids I’d met that morning, they went in one direction, the black kids went inanother direction, and I was left standing in the middle, totally confused. Were wegoing to meet up later on? I did not understand what was happening.I was eleven years old, and it was like I was seeing my country for the firsttime. In the townships you don’t see segregation, because everyone is black. In thewhite world, any time my mother took me to a white church, we were the onlyblack people there, and my mom didn’t separate herself from anyone. She didn’tcare. She’d go right up and sit with the white people. And at Maryvale, the kidswere mixed up and hanging out together. Before that day, I had never seen peoplebeing together and yet not together, occupying the same space yet choosing not toassociate with each other in any way. In an instant I could see, I could feel, howthe boundaries were drawn. Groups moved in color patterns across the yard, upthe stairs, down the hall. It was insane. I looked over at the white kids I’d met thatmorning. Ten minutes earlier I’d thought I was at a school where they were amajority. Now I realized how few of them there actually were compared toeveryone else.I stood there awkwardly by myself in this no-man’s-land in the middle of the

playground. Luckily, I was rescued by the Indian kid from my class, a guy namedTheesan Pillay. Theesan was one of the few Indian kids in school, so he’d noticedme, another obvious outsider, right away. He ran over to introduce himself.“Hello, fellow anomaly! You’re in my class. Who are you? What’s your story?” Westarted talking and hit it off. He took me under his wing, the Artful Dodger to mybewildered Oliver.Through our conversation it came up that I spoke several African languages,and Theesan thought a colored kid speaking black languages was the mostamazing trick. He brought me over to a group of black kids. “Say something,” hetold them, “and he’ll show you he understands you.” One kid said something inZulu, and I replied to him in Zulu. Everyone cheered. Another kid said somethingin Xhosa, and I replied to him in Xhosa. Everyone cheered. For the rest of recessTheesan took me around to different black kids on the playground. “Show themyour trick. Do your language thing.”The black kids were fascinated. In South Africa back then, it wasn’t commonto find a white person or a colored person who spoke African languages; duringapartheid white people were always taught that those languages were beneaththem. So the fact that I did speak African languages immediately endeared me tothe black kids.“How come you speak our languages?” they asked.“Because I’m black,” I said, “like you.”“You’re not black.”“Yes, I am.”“No, you’re not. Have you not seen yourself?”They were confused at first. Because of my color, they thought I was a coloredperson, but speaking the same languages meant that I belonged to their tribe. Itjust took them a moment to figure it out. It took me a moment, too.At some point I turned to one of them and said, “Hey, how come I don’t seeyou guys in any of my classes?” It turned out they were in the B classes, which alsohappened to be the black classes. That same afternoon, I went back to the Aclasses, and by the end of the day I realized that they weren’t for me. Suddenly, Iknew who my people were, and I wanted to be with them. I went to see the schoolcounselor.“I’d like to switch over,” I told her. “I’d like to go to the B classes.”She was confused. “Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think you want to do that.”“Why not?”“Because those kids are…you know.”“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Look,” she said, “you’re a smart kid. You don’t want to be in that class.”“But aren’t the classes the same? English is English. Math is math.”“Yeah, but that class is…those kids are gonna hold you back. You want to be inthe smart class.”“But surely there must be some smart kids in the B class.”“No, there aren’t.”“But all my friends are there.”“You don’t want to be friends with those kids.”“Yes, I do.”We went back and forth. Finally she gave me a stern warning.“You do realize the effect this will have on your future? You do understandwhat you’re giving up? This will impact the opportunities you’ll have open to youfor the rest of your life.”“I’ll take that chance.”I moved to the B classes with the black kids. I decided I’d rather be held backwith people I liked than move ahead with people I didn’t know.Being at H. A. Jack made me realize I was black. Before that recess I’d neverhad to choose, but when I was forced to choose, I chose black. The world saw meas colored, but I didn’t spend my life looking at myself. I spent my life looking atother people. I saw myself as the people around me, and the people around mewere black. My cousins are black, my mom is black, my gran is black. I grew upblack. Because I had a white father, because I’d been in white Sunday school, I gotalong with the white kids, but I didn’t belong with the white kids. I wasn’t a part oftheir tribe. But the black kids embraced me. “Come along,” they said. “You’rerolling with us.” With the black kids, I wasn’t constantly trying to be. With theblack kids, I just was.

Before apartheid, any black South African who received a formal education was likely taughtby European missionaries, foreign enthusiasts eager to Christianize and Westernize thenatives. In the mission schools, black people learned English, European literature, medicine,the law. It’s no coincidence that nearly every major black leader of the anti-apartheidmovement, from Nelson Mandela to Steve Biko, was educated by the missionaries—aknowledgeable man is a free man, or at least a man who longs for freedom.The only way to make apartheid work, therefore, was to cripple the black mind. Underapartheid, the government built what became known as Bantu schools. Bantu schools taughtno science, no history, no civics. They taught metrics and agriculture: how to count potatoes,how to pave roads, chop wood, till the soil. “It does not serve the Bantu to learn history andscience because he is primitive,” the government said. “This will only mislead him, showinghim pastures in which he is not allowed to graze.” To their credit, they were simply beinghonest. Why educate a slave? Why teach someone Latin when his only purpose is to dig holesin the ground?Mission schools were told to conform to the new curriculum or shut down. Most of themshut down, and black children were forced into crowded classrooms in dilapidated schools,often with teachers who were barely literate themselves. Our parents and grandparents weretaught with little singsong lessons, the way you’d teach a preschooler shapes and colors. Mygrandfather used to sing the songs and laugh about how silly they were. Two times two is four.Three times two is six. La la la la la. We’re talking about fully grown teenagers being taughtthis way, for generations.What happened with education in South Africa, with the mission schools and the Bantuschools, offers a neat comparison of the two groups of whites who oppressed us, the Britishand the Afrikaners. The difference between British racism and Afrikaner racism was that atleast the British gave the natives something to aspire to. If they could learn to speak correctEnglish and dress in proper clothes, if they could Anglicize and civilize themselves, one daythey might be welcome in society. The Afrikaners never gave us that option. British racismsaid, “If the monkey can walk like a man and talk like a man, then perhaps he is a man.”Afrikaner racism said, “Why give a book to a monkey?”

THE SECOND GIRLMy mother used to tell me, “I chose to have you because I wanted something tolove and something that would love me unconditionally in return.” I was a productof her search for belonging. She never felt like she belonged anywhere. She didn’tbelong to her mother, didn’t belong to her father, didn’t belong with her siblings.She grew up with nothing and wanted something to call her own.My grandparents’ marriage was an unhappy one. They met and married inSophiatown, but one year later the army came in and drove them out. Thegovernment seized their home and bulldozed the whole area to build a fancy, newwhite suburb, Triomf. Triumph. Along with tens of thousands of other blackpeople, my grandparents were forcibly relocated to Soweto, to a neighborhoodcalled the Meadowlands. They divorced not long after that, and my grandmothermoved to Orlando with my mom, my aunt, and my uncle.My mom was the problem child, a tomboy, stubborn, defiant. My gran had noidea how to raise her. Whatever love they had was lost in the constant fighting thatwent on between them. But my mom adored her father, the charming, charismaticTemperance. She went gallivanting with him on his manic misadventures. She’dtag along when he’d go drinking in the shebeens. All she wanted in life was toplease him and be with him. She was always being swatted away by his girlfriends,who didn’t like having a reminder of his first marriage hanging around, but thatonly made her want to be with him all the more.When my mother was nine years old, she told my gran that she didn’t want tolive with her anymore. She wanted to live with her father. “If that’s what youwant,” Gran said, “then go.” Temperance came to pick my mom up, and shehappily bounded up into his car, ready to go and be with the man she loved. Butinstead of taking her to live with him in the Meadowlands, without even telling herwhy, he packed her off and sent her to live with his sister in the Xhosa homeland,Transkei—he didn’t want her, either. My mom was the middle child. Her sisterwas the eldest and firstborn. Her brother was the only son, bearer of the familyname. They both stayed in Soweto, were both raised and cared for by theirparents. But my mom was unwanted. She was the second girl. The only place shewould have less value would be China.

My mother didn’t see her family again for twelve years. She lived in a hut withfourteen cousins—fourteen children from fourteen different mothers and fathers.All the husbands and uncles had gone off to the cities to find work, and thechildren who weren’t wanted, or whom no one could afford to feed, had been sentback to the homeland to live on this aunt’s farm.The homelands were, ostensibly, the original homes of South Africa’s tribes,sovereign and semi-sovereign “nations” where black people would be “free.” Ofcourse, this was a lie. For starters, despite the fact that black people made up over80 percent of South Africa’s population, the territory allocated for the homelandswas about 13 percent of the country’s land. There was no running water, noelectricity. People lived in huts.Where South Africa’s white countryside was lush and irrigated and green, theblack lands were overpopulated and overgrazed, the soil depleted and eroding.Other than the menial wages sent home from the cities, families scraped by withlittle beyond subsistence-level farming. My mother’s aunt hadn’t taken her in outof charity. She was there to work. “I was one of the cows,” my mother would latersay, “one of the oxen.” She and her cousins were up at half past four, plowingfields and herding animals before the sun baked the soil as hard as cement andmade it too hot to be anywhere but in the shade.For dinner there might be one chicken to feed fourteen children. My momwould have to fight with the bigger kids to get a handful of meat or a sip of thegravy or even a bone from which to suck out some marrow. And that’s when therewas food for dinner at all. When there wasn’t, she’d steal food from the pigs. She’dsteal food from the dogs. The farmers would put out scraps for the animals, andshe’d jump for it. She was hungry; let the animals fend for themselves. There weretimes when she literally ate dirt. She would go down to the river, take the clayfrom the riverbank, and mix it with the water to make a grayish kind of milk. She’ddrink that to feel full.But my mother was blessed that her village was one of the places where amission school had contrived to stay open in spite of the government’s Bantueducation policies. There she had a white pastor who taught her English. Shedidn’t have food or shoes or even a pair of underwear, but she had English. Shecould read and write. When she was old enough she stopped working on the farmand got a job at a factory in a nearby town. She worked on a sewing machinemaking school uniforms. Her pay at the end of each day was a plate of food. Sheused to say it was the best food she’d ever eaten, because it was something she hadearned on her own. She wasn’t a burden to anyone and didn’t owe anything toanyone.When my mom turned twenty-one, her aunt fell ill and that family could nolonger keep her in Transkei. My mom wrote to my gran, asking her to send theprice of a train ticket, about thirty rand, to bring her home. Back in Soweto, mymom enrolled in the secretarial course that allowed her to grab hold of the bottom

rung of the white-collar world. She worked and worked and worked but, livingunder my grandmother’s roof, she wasn’t allowed to keep her own wages. As asecretary, my mom was bringing home more money than anyone else, and mygrandmother insisted it all go to the family. The family needed a radio, an oven, arefrigerator, and it was now my mom’s job to provide it.So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of thepast. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows youfrom generation to generation. My mother calls it “the black tax.” Because thegenerations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to useyour skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bringeveryone behind you back up to zero. Working for the family in Soweto, my momhad no more freedom than she’d had in Transkei, so she ran away. She ran all theway down to the train station and jumped on a train and disappeared into the city,determined to sleep in public restrooms and rely on the kindness of prostitutesuntil she could make her own way in the world.—My mother never sat me down and told me the whole story of her life in Transkei.She’d give me little bursts, random details, stories of having to keep her wits abouther to avoid getting raped by strange men in the village. She’d tell me these thingsand I’d be like, Lady, clearly you do not know what kind of stories to be telling aten-year-old.My mom told me these things so that I’d never take for granted how we got towhere we were, but none of it ever came from a place of self-pity. “Learn fromyour past and be better because of your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry aboutyour past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it.Don’t be bitter.” And she never was. The deprivations of her youth, the betrayals ofher parents, she never complained about any of it.Just as she let the past go, she was determined not to repeat it: my childhoodwould bear no resemblance to hers. She started with my name. The names Xhosafamilies give their children always have a meaning, and that meaning has a way ofbecoming self-fulfilling. You have my cousin, Mlungisi. “The Fixer.” That’s who heis. Whenever I got into trouble he was the one trying to help me fix it. He wasalways the good kid, doing chores, helping around the house. You have my uncle,the unplanned pregnancy, Velile. “He Who Popped Out of Nowhere.” And that’sall he’s done his whole life, disappear and reappear. He’ll go off on a drinkingbinge and then pop back up out of nowhere a week later.Then you have my mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. “She Who GivesBack.” That’s what she does. She gives and gives and gives. She did it even as a girlin Soweto. Playing in the streets she would find toddlers, three- and four-year-olds, running around unsupervised all day long. Their fathers were gone and theirmothers were drunks. My mom, who was only six or seven herself, used to roundup the abandoned kids and form a troop and take them around to the shebeens.

They’d collect empties from the men who were passed out and take the bottles towhere you could turn them in for a deposit. Then my mom would take that money,buy food in the spaza shops, and feed the kids. She was a child taking care ofchildren.When it was time to pick my name, she chose Trevor, a name with nomeaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family. It’s not even aBiblical name. It’s just a name. My mother wanted her child beholden to no fate.She wanted me to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.She gave me the tools to do it as well. She taught me English as my firstlanguage. She read to me constantly. The first book I learned to read was the book.The Bible. Church was where we got most of our other books, too. My mom wouldbring home boxes that white people had donated—picture books, chapter books,any book she could get her hands on. Then she signed up for a subscriptionprogram where we got books in the mail. It was a series of how-to books. How toBe a Good Friend. How to Be Honest. She bought a set of encyclopedias, too; itwas fifteen years old and way out of date, but I would sit and pore through those.My books were my prized possessions. I had a bookshelf where I put them,and I was so proud of it. I loved my books and kept them in pristine condition. Iread them over and over, but I did not bend the pages or the spines. I treasuredevery single one. As I grew older I started buying my own books. I loved fantasy,loved to get lost in worlds that didn’t exist. I remember there was some bookabout white boys who solved mysteries or some shit. I had no time for that. Giveme Roald Dahl. James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Charlie and the ChocolateFactory, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. That was my fix.I had to fight to convince my mom to get the Narnia books for me. She didn’tlike them.“This lion,” she said, “he is a false God—a false idol! You remember whathappened when Moses came down from the mountain after he got the tablets…”“Yes, Mom,” I explained, “but the lion is a Christ figure. Technically, he isJesus. It’s a story to explain Jesus.”She wasn’t comfortable with that. “No, no. No false idols, my friend.”Eventually I wore her down. That was a big win.If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind. My mother spoke to melike an adult, which was unusual. In South Africa, kids play with kids and adultstalk to adults. The adults supervise you, but they don’t get down on your level andtalk to you. My mom did. All the time. I was like her best friend. She was alwaystelling me stories, giving me lessons, Bible lessons especially. She was big intoPsalms. I had to read Psalms every day. She would quiz me on it. “What does thepassage mean? What does it mean to you? How do you apply it to your life?” Thatwas every day of my life. My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to

think.—The end of apartheid was a gradual thing. It wasn’t like the Berlin Wall where oneday it just came down. Apartheid’s walls cracked and crumbled over many years.Concessions were made here and there, some laws were repealed, others simplyweren’t enforced. There came a point, in the months before Mandela’s release,when we could live less furtively. It was then that my mother decided we needed tomove. She felt we had grown as much as we could hiding in our tiny flat in town.The country was open now. Where would we go? Soweto came with itsburdens. My mother still wanted to get out from the shadow of her family. Mymother also couldn’t walk with me through Soweto without people saying, “Theregoes that prostitute with a white man’s child.” In a black area she would always beseen as that. So, since my mom didn’t want to move to a black area and couldn’tafford to move to a white area, she decided to move to a colored area.Eden Park was a colored neighborhood adjacent to several black townshipson the East Rand. Half-colored and half-black, she figured, like us. We’d becamouflaged there. It didn’t work out that way; we never fit in at all. But that washer thinking when we made the move. Plus it was a chance to buy a home—ourown home. Eden Park was one of those “suburbs” that are actually out on the edgeof civilization, the kind of place where property developers have said, “Hey, poorpeople. You can live the good life, too. Here’s a house. In the middle of nowhere.But look, you have a yard!” For some reason the streets in Eden Park were namedafter cars: Jaguar Street. Ferrari Street. Honda Street. I don’t know if that was acoincidence or not, but it’s funny because colored people in South Africa areknown for loving fancy cars. It was like living in a white neighborhood with all thestreets named after varietals of fine wine.I remember moving out there in flashbacks, snippets, driving to a place I’dnever seen, seeing people I’d never seen. It was flat, not many trees, the samedusty red-clay dirt and grass as Soweto but with proper houses and paved roadsand a sense of suburbia to it. Ours was a tiny house at the bend in the road rightoff Toyota Street. It was modest and cramped inside, but walking in I thought,Wow. We are really living. It was crazy to have my own room. I didn’t like it. Mywhole life I’d slept in a room with my mom or on the floor with my cousins. I wasused to having other human beings right next to me, so I slept in my mom’s bedmost nights.There was no stepfather in the picture yet, no baby brother crying in thenight. It was me and her, alone. There was this sense of the two of us embarkingon a grand adventure. She’d say things to me like, “It’s you and me against theworld.” I understood even from an early age that we weren’t just mother and son.We were a team.It was when we moved to Eden Park that we finally got a car, the beat-up,

tangerine Volkswagen my mother bought secondhand for next to nothing. One outof five times it wouldn’t start. There was no AC. Anytime I made the mistake ofturning on the fan the vent would fart bits of leaves and dust all over me.Whenever it broke down we’d catch minibuses, or sometimes we’d hitchhike.She’d make me hide in the bushes because she knew men would stop for a womanbut not a woman with a child. She’d stand by the road, the driver would pull over,she’d open the door and then whistle, and I’d come running up to the car. I wouldwatch their faces drop as they realized they weren’t picking up an attractive singlewoman but an attractive single woman with a fat little kid.When the car did work, we had the windows down, sputtering along andbaking in the heat. For my entire life the dial on that car’s radio stayed on onestation. It was called Radio Pulpit, and as the name suggests it was nothing butpreaching and praise. I wasn’t allowed to touch that dial. Anytime the radio wasn’tgetting reception, my mom would pop in a cassette of Jimmy Swaggart sermons.(When we finally found out about the scandal? Oh, man. That was rough.)But as shitty as our car was, it was a car. It was freedom. We weren’t blackpeople stuck in the townships, waiting for public transport. We were black peoplewho were out in the world. We were black people who could wake up and say,“Where do we choose to go today?” On the commute to work and school, there wasa long stretch of the road into town that was completely deserted. That’s whereMom would let me drive. On the highway. I was six. She’d put me on her lap andlet me steer and work the indicators while she worked the pedals and the stickshift. After a few months of that, she taught me how to work the stick. She was stillworking the clutch, but I’d climb onto her lap and take the stick, and she’d call outthe gears as we drove. There was this one part of the road that ran deep into avalley and then back up the other side. We’d get up a head of speed, and we’d stickit into neutral and let go of the brake and the clutch, and, woo-hoo!, we’d racedown the hill and then, zoom!, we’d shoot up the other side. We were flying.If we weren’t at school or work or church, we were out exploring. My mom’sattitude was “I chose you, kid. I brought you into this world, and I’m going to giveyou everything I never had.” She poured herself into me. She would find places forus to go where we didn’t have to spend money. We must have gone to every parkin Johannesburg. My mom would sit under a tree and read the Bible, and I’d runand play and play and play. On Sunday afternoons after church, we’d go for drivesout in the country. My mom would find places with beautiful views for us to sitand have a picnic. There was none of the fanfare of a picnic basket or plates oranything like that, only baloney and brown bread and margarine sandwicheswrapped up in butcher paper. To this day, baloney and brown bread andmargarine will instantly take me back. You can come with all the Michelin stars inthe world, just give me baloney and brown bread and margarine and I’m inheaven.Food, or the access to food, was always the measure of how good or bad

things were going in our lives. My mom would always say, “My job is to feed yourbody, feed your spirit, and feed your mind.” That’s exactly what she did, and theway she found money for food and books was to spend absolutely nothing onanything else. Her frugality was the stuff of legend. Our car was a tin can onwheels, and we lived in the middle of nowhere. We had threadbare furniture,busted old sofas with holes worn through the fabric. Our TV was a tiny black-and-white with a bunny aerial on top. We changed the channels using a pair of pliersbecause the buttons didn’t work. Most of the time you had to squint to see whatwas going on.We always wore secondhand clothes, from Goodwill stores or that weregiveaways from white people at church. All the other kids at school got brands,Nike and Adidas. I never got brands. One time I asked my mom for Adidassneakers. She came home with some knockoff brand, Abidas.“Mom, these are fake,” I said.“I don’t see the difference.”“Look at the logo. There are four stripes instead of three.”“Lucky you,” she said. “You got one extra.”We got by with next to nothing, but we always had church and we always hadbooks and we always had food. Mind you, it wasn’t necessarily good food. Meatwas a luxury. When things were going well we’d have chicken. My mom was anexpert at cracking open a chicken bone and getting out every last bit of marrowinside. We didn’t eat chickens. We obliterated them. Our family was anarchaeologist’s nightmare. We left no bones behind. When we were done with achicken there was nothing left but the head. Sometimes the only meat we had wasa packaged meat you could buy at the butcher called “sawdust.” It was literally thedust of the meat, the bits that fell off the cuts being packaged for the shop, the bitsof fat and whatever’s left. They’d sweep it up and put it into bags. It was meant fordogs, but my mom bought it for us. There were many months where that was allwe ate.The butcher sold bones, too. We called them “soup bones,” but they wereactually labeled “dog bones” in the store; people would cook them for their dogs asa treat. Whenever times were really tough we’d fall back on dog bones. My momwould boil them for soup. We’d suck the marrow out of them. Sucking marrow outof bones is a skill poor people learn early. I’ll never forget the first time I went to afancy restaurant as a grown man and someone told me, “You have to try the bonemarrow. It’s such a delicacy. It’s divine.” They ordered it, the waiter brought it out,and I was like, “Dog bones, motherfucker!” I was not impressed.As modestly as we lived at home, I never felt poor because our lives were sorich with experience. We were always out doing something, going somewhere. Mymom used to take me on drives through fancy white neighborhoods. We’d go lookat people’s houses, look at their mansions. We’d look at their walls, mostly,

because that’s all we could see from the road. We’d look at a wall that ran fromone end of the block to the other and go, “Wow. That’s only one house. All of thatis for one family.” Sometimes we’d pull over and go up to the wall, and she’d putme up on her shoulders like I was a little periscope. I would look into the yardsand describe everything I was seeing. “It’s a big white house! They have two dogs!There’s a lemon tree! They have a swimming pool! And a tennis court!”My mother took me places black people never went. She refused to be boundby ridiculous ideas of what black people couldn’t or shouldn’t do. She’d take me tothe ice rink to go skating. Johannesburg used to have this epic drive-in movietheater, Top Star Drive-In, on top of a massive mine dump outside the city. She’dtake me to movies there; we’d get snacks, hang the speaker on our car window.Top Star had a 360-degree view of the city, the suburbs, Soweto. Up there I couldsee for miles in every direction. I felt like I was on top of the world.My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or whatI could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid—not whiteculturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I shouldspeak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you canimagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quitelimited. Growing up in Soweto, our dream was to put another room on our house.Maybe have a driveway. Maybe, someday, a cast-iron gate at the end of thedriveway. Because that is all we knew. But the highest rung of what’s possible isfar beyond the world you can see. My mother showed me what was possible. Thething that always amazed me about her life was that no one showed her. No onechose her. She did it on her own. She found her way through sheer force of will.Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that my mother started her littleproject, me, at a time when she could not have known that apartheid would end.There was no reason to think it would end; it had seen generations come and go. Iwas nearly six when Mandela was released, ten before democracy finally came, yetshe was preparing me to live a life of freedom long before we knew freedom wouldexist. A hard life in the township or a trip to the colored orphanage were the farmore likely options on the table. But we never lived that way. We only movedforward and we always moved fast, and by the time the law and everyone elsecame around we were already miles down the road, flying across the freeway in abright-orange, piece-of-shit Volkswagen with the windows down and JimmySwaggart praising Jesus at the top of his lungs.People thought my mom was crazy. Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, thesethings were izinto zabelungu—the things of white people. So many black peoplehad internalized the logic of apartheid and made it their own. Why teach a blackchild white things? Neighbors and relatives used to pester my mom. “Why do allthis? Why show him the world when he’s never going to leave the ghetto?”“Because,” she would say, “even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know

that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.”

Apartheid, for all its power, had fatal flaws baked in, starting with the fact that it never madeany sense. Racism is not logical. Consider this: Chinese people were classified as black inSouth Africa. I don’t mean they were running around acting black. They were still Chinese.But, unlike Indians, there weren’t enough Chinese people to warrant devising a wholeseparate classification. Apartheid, despite its intricacies and precision, didn’t know what to dowith them, so the government said, “Eh, we’ll just call ’em black. It’s simpler that way.”Interestingly, at the same time, Japanese people were labeled as white. The reason for thiswas that the South African government wanted to establish good relations with the Japanesein order to import their fancy cars and electronics. So Japanese people were given honorarywhite status while Chinese people stayed black. I always like to imagine being a South Africanpoliceman who likely couldn’t tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese but whose jobwas to make sure that people of the wrong color weren’t doing the wrong thing. If he saw anAsian person sitting on a whites-only bench, what would he say?“Hey, get off that bench, you Chinaman!”“Excuse me. I’m Japanese.”“Oh, I apologize, sir. I didn’t mean to be racist. Have a lovely afternoon.”

LOOPHOLESMy mother used to tell me, “I chose to have you because I wanted something tolove and something that would love me unconditionally in return—and then I gavebirth to the most selfish piece of shit on earth and all it ever did was cry and eatand shit and say, ‘Me, me, me, me me.’ ”My mom thought having a child was going to be like having a partner, butevery child is born the center of its own universe, incapable of understanding theworld beyond its own wants and needs, and I was no different. I was a voraciouskid. I consumed boxes of books and wanted more, more, more. I ate like a pig. Theway I ate I should have been obese. At a certain point the family thought I hadworms. Whenever I went to my cousins’ house for the holidays, my mom woulddrop me off with a bag of tomatoes, onions, and potatoes and a large sack ofcornmeal. That was her way of preempting any complaints about my visit. At mygran’s house I always got seconds, which none of the other kids got. Mygrandmother would give me the pot and say, “Finish it.” If you didn’t want to washthe dishes, you called Trevor. They called me the rubbish bin of the family. I ateand ate and ate.I was hyperactive, too. I craved constant stimulation and activity. When Iwalked down the sidewalk as a toddler, if you didn’t have my arm in a death grip, Iwas off, running full-speed toward the traffic. I loved to be chased. I thought it wasa game. The old grannies my mom hired to look after me while she was at work? Iwould leave them in tears. My mom would come home and they’d be crying. “Iquit. I can’t do this. Your son is a tyrant.” It was the same with my schoolteachers,with Sunday school teachers. If you weren’t engaging me, you were in trouble. Iwasn’t a shit to people. I wasn’t whiny and spoiled. I had good manners. I was justhigh-energy and knew what I wanted to do.My mom used to take me to the park so she could run me to death to burn offthe energy. She’d take a Frisbee and throw it, and I’d run and catch it and bring itback. Over and over and over. Sometimes she’d throw a tennis ball. Black people’sdogs don’t play fetch; you don’t throw anything to a black person’s dog unless it’sfood. So it was only when I started spending time in parks with white people andtheir pets that I realized my mom was training me like a dog.

Anytime my extra energy wasn’t burned off, it would find its way into generalnaughtiness and misbehavior. I prided myself on being the ultimate prankster.Every teacher at school used overhead projectors to put their notes up on the wallduring class. One day I went around and took the magnifying glass out of everyprojector in every classroom. Another time I emptied a fire extinguisher into theschool piano, because I knew we were going to have a performance at assemblythe next day. The pianist sat down and played the first note and, foomp!, all thisfoam exploded out of the piano.The two things I loved most were fire and knives. I was endlessly fascinatedby them. Knives were just cool. I collected them from pawnshops and garage sales:flick knives, butterfly knives, the Rambo knife, the Crocodile Dundee knife. Firewas the ultimate, though. I loved fire and I especially loved fireworks. Wecelebrated Guy Fawkes Day in November, and every year my mom would buy us aton of fireworks, like a mini-arsenal. I realized that I could take the gunpowder outof all the fireworks and create one massive firework of my own. One afternoon Iwas doing precisely that, goofing around with my cousin and filling an emptyplant pot with a huge pile of gunpowder, when I got distracted by some Black Catfirecrackers. The cool thing you could do with a Black Cat was, instead of lightingit to make it explode, you could break it in half and light it and it would turn into amini-flamethrower. I stopped midway through building my gunpowder pile toplay with the Black Cats and somehow dropped a match into the pile. The wholething exploded, throwing a massive ball of flame up in my face. Mlungisiscreamed, and my mom came running into the yard in a panic.“What happened?!”I played it cool, even though I could still feel the heat of the fireball on myface. “Oh, nothing. Nothing happened.”“Were you playing with fire?!”“No.”She shook her head. “You know what? I would beat you, but Jesus has alreadyexposed your lies.”“Huh?”“Go to the bathroom and look at yourself.”I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. My eyebrows were gone and thefront inch or so of my hair was completely burned off.From an adult’s point of view, I was destructive and out of control, but as achild I didn’t think of it that way. I never wanted to destroy. I wanted to create. Iwasn’t burning my eyebrows. I was creating fire. I wasn’t breaking overheadprojectors. I was creating chaos, to see how people reacted.And I couldn’t help it. There’s a condition kids suffer from, a compulsivedisorder that makes them do things they themselves don’t understand. You can

tell a child, “Whatever you do, don’t draw on the wall. You can draw on this paper.You can draw in this book. You can draw on any surface you want. But do notdraw or write or color on the wall.” The child will look you dead in the eye and say,“Got it.” Ten minutes later the child is drawing on the wall. You start screaming.“Why the hell are you drawing on the wall?!” The child looks at you, and hegenuinely has no idea why he drew on the wall. As a kid, I remember having thatfeeling all the time. Every time I got punished, as my mom was whooping my ass,I’d be thinking, Why did I just do that? I knew not to do that. She told me not todo that. Then once the hiding was over I’d say to myself, I’m going to be so goodfrom here on. I’m never ever going to do a bad thing in my life ever ever everever ever—and to remember not to do anything bad, let me write something onthe wall to remind myself…and then I would pick up a crayon and get straightback into it, and I never understood why.—My relationship with my mom was like the relationship between a cop and acriminal in the movies—the relentless detective and the devious mastermind she’sdetermined to catch. They’re bitter rivals, but, damn, they respect the hell out ofeach other, and somehow they even grow to like each other. Sometimes my momwould catch me, but she was usually one step behind, and she was always givingme the eye. Someday, kid. Someday I’m going to catch you and put you away forthe rest of your life. Then I would give her a nod in return. Have a good evening,Officer. That was my whole childhood.My mom was forever trying to rein me in. Over the years, her tactics grewmore and more sophisticated. Where I had youth and energy on my side, she hadcunning, and she figured out different ways to keep me in line. One Sunday wewere at the shops and there was a big display of toffee apples. I loved toffee apples,and I kept nagging her the whole way through the shop. “Please can I have a toffeeapple? Please can I have a toffee apple? Please can I have a toffee apple? Pleasecan I have a toffee apple?”Finally, once we had our groceries and my mom was heading to the front topay, I succeeded in wearing her down. “Fine,” she said. “Go and get a toffee apple.”I ran, got a toffee apple, came back, and put it on the counter at the checkout.“Add this toffee apple, please,” I said.The cashier looked at me skeptically. “Wait your turn, boy. I’m still helpingthis lady.”“No,” I said. “She’s buying it for me.”My mother turned to me. “Who’s buying it for you?”“You’re buying it for me.”“No, no. Why doesn’t your mother buy it for you?”“What? My mother? You are my mother.”

“I’m your mother? No, I’m not your mother. Where’s your mother?”I was so confused. “You’re my mother.”The cashier looked at her, looked back at me, looked at her again. Sheshrugged, like, I have no idea what that kid’s talking about. Then she looked atme like she’d never seen me before in her life.“Are you lost, little boy? Where’s your mother?”“Yeah,” the cashier said. “Where’s your mother?”I pointed at my mother. “She’s my mother.”“What? She can’t be your mother, boy. She’s black. Can’t you see?”My mom shook her head. “Poor little colored boy lost his mother. What ashame.”I panicked. Was I crazy? Is she not my mother? I started bawling. “You’re mymother. You’re my mother. She’s my mother. She’s my mother.”She shrugged again. “So sad. I hope he finds his mother.”The cashier nodded. She paid him, took our groceries, and walked out of theshop. I dropped the toffee apple, ran out behind her in tears, and caught up to herat the car. She turned around, laughing hysterically, like she’d really got me good.“Why are you crying?” she asked.“Because you said you weren’t my mother. Why did you say you weren’t mymother?”“Because you wouldn’t shut up about the toffee apple. Now get in the car.Let’s go.”By the time I was seven or eight, I was too smart to be tricked, so she changedtactics. Our life turned into a courtroom drama with two lawyers constantlydebating over loopholes and technicalities. My mom was smart and had a sharptongue, but I was quicker in an argument. She’d get flustered because she couldn’tkeep up. So she started writing me letters. That way she could make her pointsand there could be no verbal sparring back and forth. If I had chores to do, I’dcome home to find an envelope slipped under the door, like from the landlord.Dear Trevor,“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”—Colossians 3:20There are certain things I expect from you as my child and as a young man. You need toclean your room. You need to keep the house clean. You need to look after your schooluniform. Please, my child, I ask you. Respect my rules so that I may also respect you. I askyou now, please go and do the dishes and do the weeds in the garden.Yours sincerely,Mom

I would do my chores, and if I had anything to say I would write back.Because my mom was a secretary and I spent hours at her office every day afterschool, I’d learned a great deal about business correspondence. I was extremelyproud of my letter-writing abilities.To Whom It May Concern:Dear Mom,I have received your correspondence earlier. I am delighted to say that I am ahead ofschedule on the dishes and I will continue to wash them in an hour or so. Please note thatthe garden is wet and so I cannot do the weeds at this time, but please be assured this taskwill be completed by the end of the weekend. Also, I completely agree with what you aresaying with regard to my respect levels and I will maintain my room to a satisfactorystandard.Yours sincerely,TrevorThose were the polite letters. If we were having a real, full-on argument or ifI’d gotten in trouble at school, I’d find more accusatory missives waiting for mewhen I got home.Dear Trevor,“Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far fromhim.”—Proverbs 22:15Your school marks this term have been very disappointing, and your behavior in classcontinues to be disruptive and disrespectful. It is clear from your actions that you do notrespect me. You do not respect your teachers. Learn to respect the women in your life. Theway you treat me and the way you treat your teachers will be the way you treat other womenin the world. Learn to buck that trend now and you will be a better man because of it.Because of your behavior I am grounding you for one week. There will be no television andno videogames.Yours sincerely,MomI, of course, would find this punishment completely unfair. I’d take the letterand confront her.“Can I speak to you about this?”“No. If you want to reply, you have to write a letter.”I’d go to my room, get out my pen and paper, sit at my little desk, and go afterher arguments one by one.To Whom It May Concern:Dear Mom,First of all, this has been a particularly tough time in school, and for you to say that mymarks are bad is extremely unfair, especially considering the fact that you yourself were notvery good in school and I am, after all, a product of yours, and so in part you are to blamebecause if you were not good in school, why would I be good in school because geneticallywe are the same. Gran always talks about how naughty you were, so obviously my

naughtiness comes from you, so I don’t think it is right or just for you to say any of this.Yours sincerely,TrevorI’d bring her the letter and stand there while she read it. Invariably she’d tearit up and throw it in the dustbin. “Rubbish! This is rubbish!” Then she’d start tolaunch into me and I’d say, “Ah-ah-ah. No. You have to write a letter.” Then I’d goto my room and wait for her reply. This sometimes went back and forth for days.The letter writing was for minor disputes. For major infractions, my momwent with the ass-whooping. Like most black South African parents, when it cameto discipline my mom was old school. If I pushed her too far, she’d go for the beltor switch. That’s just how it was in those days. Pretty much all of my friends had itthe same.My mom would have given me proper sit-down hidings if I’d given her theopportunity, but she could never catch me. My gran called me “Springbok,” afterthe second-fastest land mammal on earth, the deer that the cheetah hunts. Mymom had to become a guerrilla fighter. She got her licks in where she could, herbelt or maybe a shoe, administered on the fly.One thing I respected about my mom was that she never left me in any doubtas to why I was receiving the hiding. It wasn’t rage or anger. It was discipline froma place of love. My mom was on her own with a crazy child. I destroyed pianos. Ishat on floors. I would screw up, she’d beat the shit out of me and give me time tocry, and then she’d pop back into my room with a big smile and go, “Are you readyfor dinner? We need to hurry and eat if we want to watch Rescue 911. Are youcoming?”“What? What kind of psychopath are you? You just beat me!”“Yes. Because you did something wrong. It doesn’t mean I don’t love youanymore.”“What?”“Look, did you or did you not do something wrong?”“I did.”“And then? I hit you. And now that’s over. So why sit there and cry? It’s timefor Rescue 911. William Shatner is waiting. Are you coming or not?”—When it came to discipline, Catholic school was no joke. Whenever I got intotrouble with the nuns at Maryvale they’d rap me on the knuckles with the edge of ametal ruler. For cursing they’d wash my mouth out with soap. For serious offensesI’d get sent to the principal’s office. Only the principal could give you an officialhiding. You’d have to bend over and he’d hit your ass with this flat rubber thing,like the sole of a shoe.

Whenever the principal would hit me, it was like he was afraid to do it toohard. One day I was getting a hiding and I thought, Man, if only my mom hit melike this, and I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. The principal was quitedisturbed. “If you’re laughing while you’re getting beaten,” he said, “thensomething is definitely wrong with you.”That was the first of three times the school made my mom take me to apsychologist to be evaluated. Every psychologist who examined me came back andsaid, “There’s nothing wrong with this kid.” I wasn’t ADD. I wasn’t a sociopath. Iwas just creative and independent and full of energy. The therapists did give me aseries of tests, and they came to the conclusion that I was either going to make anexcellent criminal or be very good at catching criminals, because I could alwaysfind loopholes in the law. Whenever I thought a rule wasn’t logical, I’d find myway around it.The rules about communion at Friday mass, for example, made absolutely nosense. We’d be in there for an hour of kneeling, standing, sitting, kneeling,standing, sitting, kneeling, standing, sitting, and by the end of it I’d be starving,but I was never allowed to take communion, because I wasn’t Catholic. The otherkids could eat Jesus’s body and drink Jesus’s blood, but I couldn’t. And Jesus’sblood was grape juice. I loved grape juice. Grape juice and crackers—what morecould a kid want? And they wouldn’t let me have any. I’d argue with the nuns andthe priest all the time.“Only Catholics can eat Jesus’s body and drink Jesus’s blood, right?”“Yes.”“But Jesus wasn’t Catholic.”“No.”“Jesus was Jewish.”“Well, yes.”“So you’re telling me that if Jesus walked into your church right now, Jesuswould not be allowed to have the body and blood of Jesus?”“Well…uh…um…”They never had a satisfactory reply.One morning before mass I decided, I’m going to get me some Jesus bloodand Jesus body. I snuck behind the altar and I drank the entire bottle of grapejuice and I ate the entire bag of Eucharist to make up for all the other times that Icouldn’t.In my mind, I wasn’t breaking the rules, because the rules didn’t make anysense. And I got caught only because they broke their own rules. Another kidratted me out in confession, and the priest turned me in.

“No, no,” I protested. “You’ve broken the rules. That’s confidentialinformation. The priest isn’t supposed to repeat what you say in confession.”They didn’t care. The school could break whatever rules it wanted. Theprincipal laid into me.“What kind of a sick person would eat all of Jesus’s body and drink all ofJesus’s blood?”“A hungry person.”I got another hiding and a second trip to the psychologist for that one. Thethird visit to the shrink, and the last straw, came in grade six. A kid was bullyingme. He said he was going to beat me up, and I brought one of my knives to school.I wasn’t going to use it; I just wanted to have it. The school didn’t care. That wasthe last straw for them. I wasn’t expelled, exactly. The principal sat me down andsaid, “Trevor, we can expel you. You need to think hard about whether you reallywant to be at Maryvale next year.” I think he thought he was giving me anultimatum that would get me to shape up. But I felt like he was offering me an out,and I took it. “No,” I told him, “I don’t want to be here.” And that was the end ofCatholic school.Funnily enough, I didn’t get into trouble with my mom when it happened.There was no ass-whooping waiting for me at home. She’d lost the bursary whenshe’d left her job at ICI, and paying for private school was becoming a burden. Butmore than that, she thought the school was overreacting. The truth is she probablytook my side against Maryvale more often than not. She agreed with me 100percent about the Eucharist thing. “Let me get this straight,” she told theprincipal. “You’re punishing a child because he wants Jesus’s body and Jesus’sblood? Why shouldn’t he have those things? Of course he should have them.”When they made me see a therapist for laughing while the principal hit me, shetold the school that was ridiculous, too.“Ms. Noah, your son was laughing while we were hitting him.”“Well, clearly you don’t know how to hit a kid. That’s your problem, not mine.Trevor’s never laughed when I’ve hit him, I can tell you.”That was the weird and kind of amazing thing about my mom. If she agreedwith me that a rule was stupid, she wouldn’t punish me for breaking it. Both sheand the psychologists agreed that the school was the one with the problem, notme. Catholic school is not the place to be creative and independent.Catholic school is similar to apartheid in that it’s ruthlessly authoritarian, andits authority rests on a bunch of rules that don’t make any sense. My mother grewup with these rules and she questioned them. When they didn’t hold up, shesimply went around them. The only authority my mother recognized was God’s.God is love and the Bible is truth—everything else was up for debate. She taughtme to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on

her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her.—When I was seven years old, my mother had been dating her new boyfriend, Abel,for a year maybe, but at that point I was too young to know who they were to eachother. It was just “Hey, that’s mom’s friend who’s around a lot.” I liked Abel; hewas a really nice guy.As a black person back then, if you wanted to live in the suburbs you’d have tofind a white family renting out their servants’ quarters or sometimes their garage,which was what Abel had done. He lived in a neighborhood called Orange Grove ina white family’s garage, which he’d turned into a cottage-type thing with a hotplate and a bed. Sometimes he’d come and sleep at our house, and sometimeswe’d go stay with him. Staying in a garage when we owned our own house wasn’tideal, but Orange Grove was close to my school and my mom’s work so it had itsbenefits.This white family also had a black maid who lived in the servants’ quarters inthe backyard, and I’d play with her son whenever we stayed there. At that age mylove of fire was in full bloom. One afternoon everyone was at work—my mom andAbel and both of the white parents—and the kid and I were playing together whilehis mom was inside the house cleaning. One thing I loved doing at the time wasusing a magnifying glass to burn my name into pieces of wood. You had to aim thelens and get the focus just right and then you got the flame and then you moved itslowly and you could burn shapes and letters and patterns. I was fascinated by it.That afternoon I was teaching this kid how to do it. We were inside theservants’ quarters, which was really more of a toolshed added on to the back of thehouse, full of wooden ladders, buckets of old paint, turpentine. I had a box ofmatches with me, too—all my usual fire-making tools. We were sitting on an oldmattress that they used to sleep on the floor, basically a sack stuffed with driedstraw. The sun was beaming in through the window, and I was showing the kidhow to burn his name into a piece of plywood.At one point we took a break to go get a snack. I set the magnifying glass andthe matches on the mattress and we left. When we came back a few minutes laterwe found the shed had one of those doors that self-locks from the inside. Wecouldn’t get back in without going to get his mother, so we decided to run aroundand play in the yard. After a while I noticed smoke coming out of the cracks in thewindow frame. I ran over and looked inside. A small fire was burning in themiddle of the straw mattress where we’d left the matches and the magnifyingglass. We ran and called the maid. She came, but she didn’t know what to do. Thedoor was locked, and before we could figure out how to get into the shed the wholething caught—the mattress, the ladders, the paint, the turpentine, everything.The flames moved quickly. Soon the roof was on fire, and from there the blazespread to the main house, and the whole thing burned and burned and burned.

Smoke was billowing into the sky. A neighbor had called the fire brigade, and thesirens were on their way. Me and this kid and the maid, we ran out to the road andwatched as the firemen tried to put it out, but by the time they did, it was too late.There was nothing left but a charred brick-and-mortar shell, roof gone, and guttedfrom the inside.The white family came home and stood on the street, staring at the ruins oftheir house. They asked the maid what happened and she asked her son and thekid totally snitched. “Trevor had matches,” he said. The family said nothing to me.I don’t think they knew what to say. They were completely dumbfounded. Theydidn’t call the police, didn’t threaten to sue. What were they going to do, arrest aseven-year-old for arson? And we were so poor you couldn’t actually sue us foranything. Plus they had insurance, so that was the end of it.They kicked Abel out of the garage, which I thought was hilarious because thegarage, which was freestanding, was the only piece of the property left unscathed.I saw no reason for Abel to have to leave, but they made him. We packed up hisstuff, put it into our car, and drove home to Eden Park; Abel basically lived with usfrom then on. He and my mom got into a huge fight. “Your son has burned downmy life!” But there was no punishment for me that day. My mom was too much inshock. There’s naughty, and then there’s burning down a white person’s house.She didn’t know what to do.I didn’t feel bad about it at all. I still don’t. The lawyer in me maintains that Iam completely innocent. There were matches and there was a magnifying glassand there was a mattress and then, clearly, a series of unfortunate events. Thingscatch fire sometimes. That’s why there’s a fire brigade. But everyone in my familywill tell you, “Trevor burned down a house.” If people thought I was naughtybefore, after the fire I was notorious. One of my uncles stopped calling me Trevor.He called me “Terror” instead. “Don’t leave that kid alone in your home,” he’d say.“He’ll burn it to the ground.”My cousin Mlungisi, to this day, cannot comprehend how I survived being asnaughty as I was for as long as I did, how I withstood the number of hidings that Igot. Why did I keep misbehaving? How did I never learn my lesson? Both of mycousins were supergood kids. Mlungisi got maybe one hiding in his life. After thathe said he never wanted to experience anything like it ever again, and from thatday he always followed the rules. But I was blessed with another trait I inheritedfrom my mother: her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing thatcaused the trauma, but I don’t hold on to the trauma. I never let the memory ofsomething painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too muchabout the ass-kicking your mom gave you, or the ass-kicking that life gave you,you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s better to take it,spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You’ll have a fewbruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s okay. But after a whilethe bruises fade, and they fade for a reason—because now it’s time to get up to

some shit again.

I grew up in a black family in a black neighborhood in a black country. I’ve traveled to otherblack cities in black countries all over the black continent. And in all of that time I’ve yet tofind a place where black people like cats. One of the biggest reasons for that, as we know inSouth Africa, is that only witches have cats, and all cats are witches.There was a famous incident during an Orlando Pirates soccer match a few years ago. Acat got into the stadium and ran through the crowd and out onto the pitch in the middle of thegame. A security guard, seeing the cat, did what any sensible black person would do. He said tohimself, “That cat is a witch.” He caught the cat and—live on TV—he kicked it and stomped itand beat it to death with a sjambok, a hard leather whip.It was front-page news all over the country. White people lost their shit. Oh my word, itwas insane. The security guard was arrested and put on trial and found guilty of animal abuse.He had to pay some enormous fine to avoid spending several months in jail. What was ironicto me was that white people had spent years seeing video of black people being beaten to deathby other white people, but this one video of a black man kicking a cat, that’s what sent themover the edge. Black people were just confused. They didn’t see any problem with what theman did. They were like, “Obviously that cat was a witch. How else would a cat know how toget out onto a soccer pitch? Somebody sent it to jinx one of the teams. That man had to kill thecat. He was protecting the players.”In South Africa, black people have dogs.

FUFIA month after we moved to Eden Park, my mother brought home two cats. Blackcats. Beautiful creatures. Some woman from her work had a litter of kittens shewas trying to get rid of, and my mom ended up with two. I was excited because I’dnever had a pet before. My mom was excited because she loves animals. She didn’tbelieve in any nonsense about cats. It was just another way in which she was arebel, refusing to conform to ideas about what black people did and didn’t do.In a black neighborhood, you wouldn’t dare own a cat, especially a black cat.That would be like wearing a sign that said, “Hello, I am a witch.” That would besuicide. Since we’d moved to a colored neighborhood, my mom thought the catswould be okay. Once they were grown we let them out during the day to roam theneighborhood. Then we came home one evening and found the cats strung up bytheir tails from our front gate, gutted and skinned and bleeding out, their headschopped off. On our front wall someone had written in Afrikaans,“Heks”—“Witch.”Colored people, apparently, were no more progressive than black people onthe issue of cats.I wasn’t exactly devastated about the cats. I don’t think we’d had them longenough for me to get attached; I don’t even remember their names. And cats aredicks for the most part. As much as I tried they never felt like real pets. They nevershowed me affection nor did they accept any of mine. Had the cats made more ofan effort, I might have felt like I had lost something. But even as a kid, looking atthese dead, mutilated animals, I was like, “Well, there you have it. Maybe if they’dbeen nicer, they could have avoided this.”After the cats were killed, we took a break from pets for a while. Then we gotdogs. Dogs are cool. Almost every black family I knew had a dog. No matter howpoor you were, you had a dog. White people treat dogs like children or members ofthe family. Black people’s dogs are more for protection, a poor-man’s alarmsystem. You buy a dog and you keep it out in the yard. Black people name dogs bytheir traits. If it has stripes, you call it Tiger. If it’s vicious, you call it Danger. If ithas spots, you call it Spotty. Given the finite number of traits a dog can have,pretty much everyone’s dogs have the same names; people just recycle them.We’d never had dogs in Soweto. Then one day some lady at my mom’s work

offered us two puppies. They weren’t planned puppies. This woman’s Maltesepoodle had been impregnated by the bull terrier from next door, a strange mix. Mymom said she’d take them both. She brought them home, and I was the happiestkid on earth.My mom named them Fufi and Panther. Fufi, I don’t know where her namecame from. Panther had a pink nose, so she was Pink Panther and eventually justPanther. They were two sisters who loved and hated each other. They would lookout for each other, but they would also fight all the time. Like, blood fights. Biting.Clawing. It was a strange, gruesome relationship.Panther was my mom’s dog; Fufi was mine. Fufi was beautiful. Clean lines,happy face. She looked like a perfect bull terrier, only skinnier because of theMaltese mixed in. Panther, who was more half-and-half, came out weird andscruffy-looking. Panther was smart. Fufi was dumb as shit. At least we alwaysthought she was dumb as shit. Whenever we called them, Panther would comeright away, but Fufi wouldn’t do anything. Panther would run back and get Fufiand then they’d both come. It turned out that Fufi was deaf. Years later Fufi diedwhen a burglar was trying to break into our house. He pushed the gate over and itfell on her back and broke her spine. We took her to the vet and she had to be putdown. After examining her, the vet came over and gave us the news.“It must have been strange for your family living with a dog that was deaf,” hesaid.“What?”“You didn’t know your dog was deaf?”“No, we thought it was stupid.”That’s when we realized that their whole lives the one dog had been telling theother dog what to do somehow. The smart, hearing one was helping the dumb,deaf one.Fufi was the love of my life. Beautiful but stupid. I raised her. I potty-trainedher. She slept in my bed. A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It’s like a bicyclebut with emotions.Fufi could do all sorts of tricks. She could jump super high. I mean, Fufi couldjump. I could hold a piece of food out above my own head and she’d leap up andgrab it like it was nothing. If YouTube had been around, Fufi would have been astar.Fufi was a little rascal as well. During the day we kept the dogs in thebackyard, which was enclosed by a wall at least five feet high. After a while, everyday we’d come home and Fufi would be sitting outside the gate, waiting for us. Wewere always confused. Was someone opening the gate? What was going on? Itnever occurred to us that she could actually scale a five-foot wall, but that wasexactly what was happening. Every morning, Fufi would wait for us to leave, jump

over the wall, and go roaming around the neighborhood.I caught her one day when I was home for the school holidays. My mom hadleft for work and I was in the living room. Fufi didn’t know I was there; shethought I was gone because the car was gone. I heard Panther barking in thebackyard, looked out, and there was Fufi, scaling the wall. She’d jumped,scampered up the last couple of feet, and then she was gone.I couldn’t believe this was happening. I ran out front, grabbed my bicycle, andfollowed her to see where she was going. She went a long way, many streets over,to another part of the neighborhood. Then she went up to this other house andjumped over their wall and into their backyard. What the hell was she doing? Iwent up to the gate and rang the doorbell. This colored kid answered.“May I help you?” he said.“Yeah. My dog is in your yard.”“What?”“My dog. She’s in your yard.”Fufi walked up and stood between us.“Fufi, come!” I said. “Let’s go!”This kid looked at Fufi and called her by some other stupid name, Spotty orsome bullshit like that.“Spotty, go back inside the house.”“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “Spotty? That’s Fufi!”“No, that’s my dog, Spotty.”“No, that’s Fufi, my friend.”“No, this is Spotty.”“How could this be Spotty? She doesn’t even have spots. You don’t know whatyou’re talking about.”“This is Spotty!”“Fufi!”“Spotty!”“Fufi!”Of course, since Fufi was deaf she didn’t respond to “Spotty” or “Fufi.” Shejust stood there. I started cursing the kid out.“Give me back my dog!”“I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but you better get out of here.”Then he went into the house and got his mom and she came out.

“What do you want?” she said.“That’s my dog!”“This is our dog. Go away.”I started crying. “Why are you stealing my dog?!” I turned to Fufi and beggedher. “Fufi, why are you doing this to me?! Why, Fufi?! Why?!” I called to her. Ibegged her to come. Fufi was deaf to my pleas. And everything else.I jumped onto my bike and raced home, tears running down my face. I lovedFufi so much. To see her with another boy, acting like she didn’t know me, after Iraised her, after all the nights we spent together. I was heartbroken.That evening Fufi didn’t come home. Because the other family thought I wascoming to steal their dog, they had decided to lock her inside, so she couldn’tmake it back the way she normally did to wait for us outside the fence. My momgot home from work. I was in tears. I told her Fufi had been kidnapped. We wentback to the house. My mom rang the bell and confronted the mom.“Look, this is our dog.”This lady lied to my mom’s face. “This is not your dog. We bought this dog.”“You didn’t buy the dog. It’s our dog.”They went back and forth. This woman wasn’t budging, so we went home toget evidence: pictures of us with the dogs, certificates from the vet. I was cryingthe whole time, and my mom was losing her patience with me. “Stop crying! We’llget the dog! Calm down!”We gathered up our documentation and went back to the house. This time webrought Panther with us, as part of the proof. My mom showed this lady thepictures and the information from the vet. She still wouldn’t give us Fufi. My momthreatened to call the police. It turned into a whole thing. Finally my mom said,“Okay, I’ll give you a hundred rand.”“Fine,” the lady said.My mom gave her some money and she brought Fufi out. The other kid, whothought Fufi was Spotty, had to watch his mother sell the dog he thought was his.Now he started crying. “Spotty! No! Mom, you can’t sell Spotty!” I didn’t care. Ijust wanted Fufi back.Once Fufi saw Panther she came right away. The dogs left with us and wewalked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time formy whining.“Why are you crying?!”“Because Fufi loves another boy.”“So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She

still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.”Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. Itwas a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’tcheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest.Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her otherrelationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent.I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog.I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experienceshaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not ownthe thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I haveso many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll cometo me angry and crying and talking about how they’ve been cheated on and lied to,and I feel for them. I understand what they’re going through. I sit with them andbuy them a drink and I say, “Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi.”

When I was twenty-four years old, one day out of the blue my mother said to me, “You needto find your father.”“Why?” I asked. At that point I hadn’t seen him in over ten years and didn’t think I’d eversee him again.“Because he’s a piece of you,” she said, “and if you don’t find him you won’t find yourself.”“I don’t need him for that,” I said. “I know who I am.”“It’s not about knowing who you are. It’s about him knowing who you are, and youknowing who he is. Too many men grow up without their fathers, so they spend their liveswith a false impression of who their father is and what a father should be. You need to findyour father. You need to show him what you’ve become. You need to finish that story.”

ROBERTMy father is a complete mystery. There are so many questions about his life that Istill cannot even begin to answer.Where’d he grow up? Somewhere in Switzerland.Where’d he go to university? I don’t know if he did.How’d he end up in South Africa? I haven’t a clue.I’ve never met my Swiss grandparents. I don’t know their names or anythingabout them. I do know my dad has an older sister, but I’ve never met her, either. Iknow that he worked as a chef in Montreal and New York for a while beforemoving to South Africa in the late 1970s. I know that he worked for an industrialfood-service company and that he opened a couple of bars and restaurants hereand there. That’s about it.I never called my dad “Dad.” I never addressed him “Daddy” or “Father,”either. I couldn’t. I was instructed not to. If we were out in public or anywherepeople might overhear us and I called him “Dad,” someone might have askedquestions or called the police. So for as long as I can remember I always called himRobert.While I know nothing of my dad’s life before me, thanks to my mom and justfrom the time I have been able to spend with him, I do have a sense of who he is asa person. He’s very Swiss, clean and particular and precise. He’s the only person Iknow who checks into a hotel room and leaves it cleaner than when he arrived. Hedoesn’t like anyone waiting on him. No servants, no housekeepers. He cleans upafter himself. He likes his space. He lives in his own world and does his owneverything.I know that he never married. He used to say that most people marry becausethey want to control another person, and he never wanted to be controlled. I knowthat he loves traveling, loves entertaining, having people over. But at the sametime his privacy is everything to him. Wherever he lives he’s never listed in thephone book. I’m sure my parents would have been caught in their time together ifhe hadn’t been as private as he is. My mom was wild and impulsive. My father wasreserved and rational. She was fire, he was ice. They were opposites that attracted,and I am a mix of them both.

One thing I do know about my dad is that he hates racism and homogeneitymore than anything, and not because of any feelings of self-righteousness or moralsuperiority. He just never understood how white people could be racist in SouthAfrica. “Africa is full of black people,” he would say. “So why would you come allthe way to Africa if you hate black people? If you hate black people so much, whydid you move into their house?” To him it was insane.Because racism never made sense to my father, he never subscribed to any ofthe rules of apartheid. In the early eighties, before I was born, he opened one ofthe first integrated restaurants in Johannesburg, a steakhouse. He applied for aspecial license that allowed businesses to serve both black and white patrons.These licenses existed because hotels and restaurants needed them to serve blacktravelers and diplomats from other countries, who in theory weren’t subject to thesame restrictions as black South Africans; black South Africans with money inturn exploited that loophole to frequent those hotels and restaurants.My dad’s restaurant was an instant, booming success. Black people camebecause there were few upscale establishments where they could eat, and theywanted to come and sit in a nice restaurant and see what that was like. Whitepeople came because they wanted to see what it was like to sit with black people.The white people would sit and watch the black people eat, and the black peoplewould sit and eat and watch the white people watching them eat. The curiosity ofbeing together overwhelmed the animosity keeping people apart. The place had agreat vibe.The restaurant closed only because a few people in the neighborhood took itupon themselves to complain. They filed petitions, and the government startedlooking for ways to shut my dad down. At first the inspectors came and tried to gethim on cleanliness and health-code violations. Clearly they had never heard of theSwiss. That failed dismally. Then they decided to go after him by imposingadditional and arbitrary restrictions.“Since you’ve got the license you can keep the restaurant open,” they said,“but you’ll need to have separate toilets for every racial category. You’ll need whitetoilets, black toilets, colored toilets, and Indian toilets.”“But then it will be a whole restaurant of nothing but toilets.”“Well, if you don’t want to do that, your other option is to make it a normalrestaurant and only serve whites.”He closed the restaurant.After apartheid fell, my father moved from Hillbrow to Yeoville, a formerlyquiet, residential neighborhood that had transformed into this vibrant melting potof black and white and every other hue. Immigrants were pouring in from Nigeriaand Ghana and all over the continent, bringing different food and exciting music.Rockey Street was the main strip, and its sidewalks were filled with street vendorsand restaurants and bars. It was an explosion of culture.

My dad lived two blocks over from Rockey, on Yeo Street, right next to thisincredible park where I loved to go because kids of all races and differentcountries were running around and playing there. My dad’s house was simple.Nice, but nothing fancy. I feel like my dad had enough money to be comfortableand travel, but he never spent lavishly on things. He’s extremely frugal, the kind ofguy who drives the same car for twenty years.My father and I lived on a schedule. I visited him every Sunday afternoon.Even though apartheid had ended, my mom had made her decision: She didn’twant to get married. So we had our house, and he had his. I’d made a deal with mymom that if I went with her to mixed church and white church in the morning,after that I’d get to skip black church and go to my dad’s, where we’d watchFormula 1 racing instead of casting out demons.I celebrated my birthday with my dad every year, and we spent Christmaswith him as well. I loved Christmas with my dad because my dad celebratedEuropean Christmas. European Christmas was the best Christmas ever. My dadwent all out. He had Christmas lights and a Christmas tree. He had fake snow andsnow globes and stockings hung by the fireplace and lots of wrapped presentsfrom Santa Claus. African Christmas was a lot more practical. We’d go to church,come home, have a nice meal with good meat and lots of custard and jelly. Butthere was no tree. You’d get a present, but it was usually just clothes, a new outfit.You might get a toy, but it wasn’t wrapped and it was never from Santa Claus. Thewhole issue of Santa Claus is a rather contentious one when it comes to AfricanChristmas, a matter of pride. When an African dad buys his kid a present, the lastthing he’s going to do is give some fat white man credit for it. African Dad will tellyou straight up, “No, no, no. I bought you that.”Outside of birthdays and special occasions, all we had were our Sundayafternoons. He would cook for me. He’d ask me what I wanted, and I’d alwaysrequest the exact same meal, a German dish called Rösti, which is basically apancake made out of potatoes and some sort of meat with a gravy. I’d have thatand a bottle of Sprite, and for dessert a plastic container of custard with caramelon top.A good chunk of those afternoons would pass in silence. My dad didn’t talkmuch. He was caring and devoted, attentive to detail, always a card on mybirthday, always my favorite food and toys when I came for a visit. But at the sametime he was a closed book. We’d talk about the food he was making, talk about theF1 racing we’d watched. Every now and then he’d drop a tidbit of information,about a place he’d visited or his steakhouse. But that was it. Being with my dadwas like watching a web series. I’d get a few minutes of information a few minutesat a time, then I’d have to wait a week for the next installment.—When I was thirteen my dad moved to Cape Town, and we lost touch. We’d beenlosing touch for a while, for a couple of reasons. I was a teenager. I had a whole

other world I was dealing with now. Videogames and computers meant more tome than spending time with my parents. Also, my mom had married Abel. He wasincensed by the idea of my mom being in contact with her previous love, and shedecided it was safer for everyone involved not to test his anger. I went from seeingmy dad every Sunday to seeing him every other Sunday, maybe once a month,whenever my mom could sneak me over, same as she’d done back in Hillbrow.We’d gone from living under apartheid to living under another kind of tyranny,that of an abusive, alcoholic man.At the same time, Yeoville had started to suffer from white flight, neglect,general decline. Most of my dad’s German friends had left for Cape Town. If hewasn’t seeing me, he had no reason to stay, so he left. His leaving wasn’t anythingtraumatic, because it never registered that we might lose touch and never see eachother again. In my mind it was just Dad’s moving to Cape Town for a bit.Whatever.Then he was gone. I stayed busy living my life, surviving high school,surviving my early twenties, becoming a comedian. My career took off quickly. Igot a radio DJ gig and hosted a kids’ adventure reality show on television. I washeadlining at clubs all over the country. But even as my life was moving forward,the questions about my dad were always there in the back of my mind, bubblingup to the surface now and then. “I wonder where he is. Does he think about me?Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud of me?” When a parent is absent,you’re left in the lurch of not knowing, and it’s so easy to fill that space withnegative thoughts. “They don’t care.” “They’re selfish.” My one saving grace wasthat my mom never spoke ill of him. She would always compliment him. “You’regood with your money. You get that from your dad.” “You have your dad’s smile.”“You’re clean and tidy like your father.” I never turned to bitterness, because shemade sure I knew his absence was because of circumstance and not a lack of love.She always told me the story of her coming home from the hospital and my dadsaying, “Where’s my kid? I want that kid in my life.” She’d say to me, “Don’t everforget: He chose you.” And, ultimately, when I turned twenty-four, it was my momwho made me track him down.Because my father is so private, finding him was hard work. We didn’t havean address. He wasn’t in the phone book. I started by reaching out to some of hisold connections, German expats in Johannesburg, a woman who used to date oneof his friends who knew somebody who knew the last place he stayed. I gotnowhere. Finally my mom suggested the Swiss embassy. “They have to knowwhere he is,” she said, “because he has to be in touch with them.”I wrote to the Swiss embassy asking them where my father was, but becausemy father is not on my birth certificate I had no proof that my father is my father.The embassy wrote back and said they couldn’t give me any information, becausethey didn’t know who I was. I tried calling them, and I got the runaround there aswell. “Look, kid,” they said. “We can’t help you. We’re the Swiss embassy. Do you

know nothing about the Swiss? Discretion is kind of our thing. That’s what we do.Tough luck.” I kept pestering them and finally they said, “Okay, we’ll take yourletter and, if a man such as you’re describing exists, we might forward your letterto him. If he doesn’t, maybe we won’t. Let’s see what happens.”A few months later, a letter came back in the post: “Great to hear from you.How are you? Love, Dad.” He gave me his address in Cape Town, in aneighborhood called Camps Bay, and a few months later I went down to visit.I’ll never forget that day. It was probably one of the weirdest days of my life,going to meet a person I knew and yet did not know at all. My memories of himfelt just out of reach. I was trying to remember how he spoke, how he laughed,what his manner was. I parked on his street and started looking for his address.Camps Bay is full of older, semiretired white people, and as I walked down theroad all these old white men were walking toward me and past me. My father waspushing seventy by that point, and I was so afraid I’d forgotten what he lookedlike. I was looking in the face of every old white man who passed me, like, Are youmy daddy? Basically it looked like I was cruising old white dudes in a beachfrontretirement community. Then finally I got to the address I’d been given and rangthe bell, and the second he opened the door I recognized him. Hey! It’s you, Ithought. Of course it’s you. You’re the guy. I know you.We picked up right where we’d left off, which was him treating me exactly theway he’d treated me as a thirteen-year-old boy. Like the creature of habit he was,my father went straight back into it. “Right! So where were we? Here, I’ve got allyour favorites. Potato Rösti. A bottle of Sprite. Custard with caramel.” Luckily mytastes hadn’t matured much since the age of thirteen, so I tucked right in.While I was eating he got up and went and picked up this book, an oversizedphoto album, and brought it back to the table. “I’ve been following you,” he said,and he opened it up. It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done, every timemy name was mentioned in a newspaper, everything from magazine covers to thetiniest club listings, from the beginning of my career all the way through to thatweek. He was smiling so big as he took me through it, looking at the headlines.“Trevor Noah Appearing This Saturday at the Blues Room.” “Trevor Noah HostingNew TV Show.”I felt a flood of emotions rushing through me. It was everything I could do notto start crying. It felt like this ten-year gap in my life closed right up in an instant,like only a day had passed since I’d last seen him. For years I’d had so manyquestions. Is he thinking about me? Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud ofme? But he’d been with me the whole time. He’d always been proud of me.Circumstance had pulled us apart, but he was never not my father.I walked out of his house that day an inch taller. Seeing him had reaffirmedhis choosing of me. He chose to have me in his life. He chose to answer my letter. Iwas wanted. Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another humanbeing.

Once we reconnected, I was overcome by this drive to make up for all theyears we’d missed. I decided the best way to do it was to interview him. I realizedvery quickly that that was a mistake. Interviews will give you facts andinformation, but facts and information weren’t really what I was after. What Iwanted was a relationship, and an interview is not a relationship. Relationshipsare built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe them andinteract with them, and you come to know them—and that is what apartheid stolefrom us: time. You can’t make up for that with an interview, but I had to figurethat out for myself.I went down to spend a few days with my father, and I made it my mission:This weekend I will get to know my father. As soon as I arrived I started pepperinghim with questions. “Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Why didyou do this? How did you do that?” He started getting visibly irritated.“What is this?” he said. “Why are you interrogating me? What’s going onhere?”“I want to get to know you.”“Is this how you normally get to know people, by interrogating them?”“Well…not really.”“So how do you get to know people?”“I dunno. By spending time with them, I guess.”“Okay. So spend time with me. See what you find out.”So we spent the weekend together. We had dinner and talked about politics.We watched F1 racing and talked about sports. We sat quietly in his backyard andlistened to old Elvis Presley records. The whole time he said not one word abouthimself. Then, as I was packing up to leave, he walked over to me and sat down.“So,” he said, “in the time we’ve spent together, what would you say you’velearned about your dad?”“Nothing. All I know is that you’re extremely secretive.”“You see? You’re getting to know me already.”

 

When Dutch colonists landed at the southern tip of Africa over three hundred years ago,they encountered an indigenous people known as the Khoisan. The Khoisan are the NativeAmericans of South Africa, a lost tribe of bushmen, nomadic hunter-gatherers distinct fromthe darker, Bantu-speaking peoples who later migrated south to become the Zulu, Xhosa, andSotho tribes of modern South Africa. While settling in Cape Town and the surroundingfrontier, the white colonists had their way with the Khoisan women, and the first mixedpeople of South Africa were born.To work the colonists’ farms, slaves were soon imported from different corners of theDutch empire, from West Africa, Madagascar, and the East Indies. The slaves and the Khoisanintermarried, and the white colonists continued to dip in and take their liberties, and overtime the Khoisan all but disappeared from South Africa. While most were killed off throughdisease, famine, and war, the rest of their bloodline was bred out of existence, mixed in withthe descendants of whites and slaves to form an entirely new race of people: coloreds. Coloredpeople are a hybrid, a complete mix. Some are light and some are dark. Some have Asianfeatures, some have white features, some have black features. It’s not uncommon for a coloredman and a colored woman to have a child that looks nothing like either parent.The curse that colored people carry is having no clearly defined heritage to go back to. Ifthey trace their lineage back far enough, at a certain point it splits into white and native and atangled web of “other.” Since their native mothers are gone, their strongest affinity has alwaysbeen with their white fathers, the Afrikaners. Most colored people don’t speak Africanlanguages. They speak Afrikaans. Their religion, their institutions, all of the things thatshaped their culture came from Afrikaners.The history of colored people in South Africa is, in this respect, worse than the history ofblack people in South Africa. For all that black people have suffered, they know who they are.Colored people don’t.

THE MULBERRY TREEAt the end of our street in Eden Park, right in a bend at the top of the road, stood agiant mulberry tree growing out of someone’s front yard. Every year when it borefruit the neighborhood kids would go and pick berries from it, eating as many asthey could and filling up bags to take home. They would all play under the treetogether. I had to play under the tree by myself. I didn’t have any friends in EdenPark.I was the anomaly wherever we lived. In Hillbrow, we lived in a white area,and nobody looked like me. In Soweto, we lived in a black area, and nobodylooked like me. Eden Park was a colored area. In Eden Park, everyone looked likeme, but we couldn’t have been more different. It was the biggest mindfuck I’veever experienced.The animosity I felt from the colored people I encountered growing up wasone of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with. It taught me that it is easier tobe an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider. If a white guychooses to immerse himself in hip-hop culture and only hang out with blackpeople, black people will say, “Cool, white guy. Do what you need to do.” If a blackguy chooses to button up his blackness to live among white people and play lots ofgolf, white people will say, “Fine. I like Brian. He’s safe.” But try being a blackperson who immerses himself in white culture while still living in the blackcommunity. Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culturewhile still living in the white community. You will face more hate and ridicule andostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you ifthey see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they seeyou as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is somethingthey will never forgive. That is what happened to me in Eden Park.—When apartheid came, colored people defied easy categorization, so the systemused them—quite brilliantly—to sow confusion, hatred, and mistrust. For thepurposes of the state, colored people became the almost-whites. They weresecond-class citizens, denied the rights of white people but given special privilegesthat black people didn’t have, just to keep them holding out for more. Afrikanersused to call them amperbaas: “the almost-boss.” The almost-master. “You’re

almost there. You’re so close. You’re this close to being white. Pity yourgrandfather couldn’t keep his hands off the chocolate, eh? But it’s not your faultyou’re colored, so keep trying. Because if you work hard enough you can erase thistaint from your bloodline. Keep on marrying lighter and whiter and don’t touchthe chocolate and maybe, maybe, someday, if you’re lucky, you can becomewhite.”Which seems ridiculous, but it would happen. Every year under apartheid,some colored people would get promoted to white. It wasn’t a myth; it was real.People could submit applications to the government. Your hair might becomestraight enough, your skin might become light enough, your accent might becomepolished enough—and you’d be reclassified as white. All you had to do wasdenounce your people, denounce your history, and leave your darker-skinnedfriends and family behind.The legal definition of a white person under apartheid was “one who inappearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as acoloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not inappearance obviously a white person.” It was completely arbitrary, in other words.That’s where the government came up with things like the pencil test. If you wereapplying to be white, the pencil went into your hair. If it fell out, you were white. Ifit stayed in, you were colored. You were what the government said you were.Sometimes that came down to a lone clerk eyeballing your face and making a snapdecision. Depending on how high your cheekbones were or how broad your nosewas, he could tick whatever box made sense to him, thereby deciding where youcould live, whom you could marry, what jobs and rights and privileges you wereallowed.And colored people didn’t just get promoted to white. Sometimes coloredpeople became Indian. Sometimes Indian people became colored. Sometimesblacks were promoted to colored, and sometimes coloreds were demoted to black.And of course whites could be demoted to colored as well. That was key. Thosemixed bloodlines were always lurking, waiting to peek out, and fear of losing theirstatus kept white people in line. If two white parents had a child and thegovernment decided that child was too dark, even if both parents produceddocumentation proving they were white, the child could be classified as colored,and the family had to make a decision. Do they give up their white status to go andlive as colored people in a colored area? Or would they split up, the mother takingthe colored child to live in the ghetto while the father stayed white to make a livingto support them?Many colored people lived in this limbo, a true purgatory, always yearning forthe white fathers who disowned them, and they could be horribly racist to oneanother as a result. The most common colored slur was boesman. “Bushman.”“Bushie.” Because it called out their blackness, their primitiveness. The worst wayto insult a colored person was to infer that they were in some way black. One of

the most sinister things about apartheid was that it taught colored people that itwas black people who were holding them back. Apartheid said that the only reasoncolored people couldn’t have first-class status was because black people might usecoloredness to sneak past the gates to enjoy the benefits of whiteness.That’s what apartheid did: It convinced every group that it was because of theother race that they didn’t get into the club. It’s basically the bouncer at the doortelling you, “We can’t let you in because of your friend Darren and his ugly shoes.”So you look at Darren and say, “Screw you, Black Darren. You’re holding meback.” Then when Darren goes up, the bouncer says, “No, it’s actually your friendSizwe and his weird hair.” So Darren says, “Screw you, Sizwe,” and now everyonehates everyone. But the truth is that none of you were ever getting into that club.Colored people had it rough. Imagine: You’ve been brainwashed intobelieving that your blood is tainted. You’ve spent all your time assimilating andaspiring to whiteness. Then, just as you think you’re closing in on the finish line,some fucking guy named Nelson Mandela comes along and flips the country on itshead. Now the finish line is back where the starting line was, and the benchmark isblack. Black is in charge. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. For centuriescolored people were told: Blacks are monkeys. Don’t swing from the trees likethem. Learn to walk upright like the white man. Then all of a sudden it’s Planet ofthe Apes, and the monkeys have taken over.—So you can imagine how weird it was for me. I was mixed but not colored—coloredby complexion but not by culture. Because of that I was seen as a colored personwho didn’t want to be colored.In Eden Park, I encountered two types of colored people. Some coloredpeople hated me because of my blackness. My hair was curly and I was proud ofmy Afro. I spoke African languages and loved speaking them. People would hearme speaking Xhosa or Zulu and they’d say, “Wat is jy? ’n Boesman?” “What areyou, a Bushman?” Why are you trying to be black? Why do you speak that click-click language? Look at your light skin. You’re almost there and you’re throwing itaway.Other colored people hated me because of my whiteness. Even though Iidentified as being black, I had a white father. I went to an English private school.I’d learned to get along with white people at church. I could speak perfect English,and I barely spoke Afrikaans, the language colored people were supposed to speak.So colored people thought that I thought I was better than them. They wouldmock my accent, like I was putting on airs. “Dink jy, jy is grênd?” “You thinkyou’re high class?”—uppity, people would say in America.Even when I thought I was liked, I wasn’t. One year I got a brand-new bikeduring the summer holidays. My cousin Mlungisi and I were taking turns ridingaround the block. I was riding up our street when this cute colored girl came out to

the road and stopped me. She smiled and waved to me sweetly.“Hey,” she said, “can I ride your bike?”I was completely shocked. Oh, wow, I thought, I made a friend.“Yeah, of course,” I said.I got off and she got on and rode about twenty or thirty feet. Some randomolder kid came running up to the street, she stopped and got off, and he climbedon and rode away. I was so happy that a girl had spoken to me that it didn’t fullysink in that they’d stolen my bicycle. I ran back home, smiling and skipping along.My cousin asked where the bicycle was. I told him.“Trevor, you’ve been robbed,” he said. “Why didn’t you chase them?”“I thought they were being nice. I thought I’d made a friend.”Mlungisi was older, my protector. He ran off and found the kids, and thirtyminutes later he came back with my bike.Things like that happened a lot. I was bullied all the time. The incident at themulberry tree was probably the worst of them. Late one afternoon I was playing bymyself like I always did, running around the neighborhood. This group of five orsix colored boys was up the street picking berries off the mulberry tree and eatingthem. I went over and started picking some to take home for myself. The boyswere a few years older than me, around twelve or thirteen. They didn’t talk to me,and I didn’t talk to them. They were speaking to one another in Afrikaans, and Icould understand what they were saying. Then one of them, this kid who was theringleader of the group, walked over. “Mag ek jou moerbeie sien?” “Can I see yourmulberries?” My first thought, again, was, Oh, cool. I made a friend. I held up myhand and showed him my mulberries. Then he knocked them out of my hand andsmushed them into the ground. The other kids started laughing. I stood there andlooked at him a moment. By that point I’d developed thick skin. I was used tobeing bullied. I shrugged it off and went back to picking berries.Clearly not getting the reaction he wanted, this kid started cursing me out.“Fok weg, jou onnosele Boesman!” “Get the fuck out of here! Go away, you stupidBushie! Bushman!” I ignored him and went on about my business. Then I felt asplat! on the back of my head. He’d hit me with a mulberry. It wasn’t painful, juststartling. I turned to look at him and, splat!, he hit me again, right in my face.Then, in a split second, before I could even react, all of these kids startedpelting me with berries, pelting the shit out of me. Some of the berries weren’tripe, and they stung like rocks. I tried to cover my face with my hands, but therewas a barrage coming at me from all sides. They were laughing and pelting me andcalling me names. “Bushie! Bushman!” I was terrified. Just the suddenness of it, Ididn’t know what to do. I started crying, and I ran. I ran for my life, all the wayback down the road to our house.When I ran inside I looked like I’d been beaten to a pulp because I was

bawling my eyes out and was covered in red-purple berry juice. My mother lookedat me, horrified.“What happened?”In between sobs I told her the story. “These kids…the mulberry tree…theythrew berries at me…” When I finished, she burst out laughing. “It’s not funny!” Isaid.“No, no, Trevor,” she said. “I’m not laughing because it’s funny. I’m laughingout of relief. I thought you’d been beaten up. I thought this was blood. I’mlaughing because it’s only berry juice.”My mom thought everything was funny. There was no subject too dark or toopainful for her to tackle with humor. “Look on the bright side,” she said, laughingand pointing to the half of me covered in dark berry juice. “Now you really are halfblack and half white.”“It’s not funny!”“Trevor, you’re okay,” she said. “Go and wash up. You’re not hurt. You’re hurtemotionally. But you’re not hurt.”Half an hour later, Abel showed up. At that point Abel was still my mom’sboyfriend. He wasn’t trying to be my father or even a stepfather, really. He wasmore like a big brother than anything. He’d joke around with me, have fun. Ididn’t know him that well, but one thing I did know about him was that he had atemper. Very charming when he wanted to be, incredibly funny, but fuck he couldbe mean. He’d grown up in the homelands, where you had to fight to survive. Abelwas big, too, around six-foot-three, long and lean. He hadn’t hit my mom yet. Hehadn’t hit me yet, either. But I knew he was dangerous. I’d seen it. Someone wouldcut us off in traffic. Abel would yell out the window. The other guy would honk andyell back. In a flash Abel would be out of our car, over to theirs, grabbing the guythrough the driver’s-side window, screaming in his face, raising a fist. You’d seethe other guy panic. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”When Abel walked in that night, he sat down on the couch and saw that I’dbeen crying.“What happened?” he said.I started to explain. My mother cut me off. “Don’t tell him,” she said. Sheknew what would happen. She knew better than me.“Don’t tell me what?” Abel said.“It’s nothing,” she said.“It’s not nothing,” I said.She glared at me. “Don’t tell him.”Abel was getting frustrated. “What? Don’t tell me what?”

He’d been drinking; he never came home from work sober, and the drinkingalways made his temper worse. It was strange, but in that moment I realized thatif I said the right things I could get him to step in and do something. We werealmost family, and I knew if I made him feel like his family had been insulted, he’dhelp me get back at the boys. I knew he had a demon inside him, and I hated that;it terrified me how violent and dangerous he was when he snapped. But in thatmoment I knew exactly what I had to say to get the monster on my side.I told him the story, the names they called me, the way they attacked me. Mymother kept laughing it off, telling me to get over it, that it was kids being kids, nobig deal. She was trying to defuse the situation, but I couldn’t see that. I was justmad at her. “You think it’s a joke, but it’s not funny! It’s not funny!”Abel wasn’t laughing. As I told him what the bullies had done, I could see theanger building up inside him. With Abel’s anger, there was no ranting and raving,no clenched fists. He sat there on the couch listening to me, not saying a word.Then, very calm and deliberate, he stood up.“Take me to these boys,” he said.Yes, I thought, this is it. Big brother is going to get my revenge for me.We got into his car and drove up the road, stopping a few houses down fromthe tree. It was dark now except for the light from the streetlamps, but we couldsee the boys were still there, playing under the tree. I pointed to the ringleader.“That one. He was the main one.” Abel slammed his foot on the gas and shot uponto the grass and straight toward the bottom of the tree. He jumped out. Ijumped out. As soon as the kids saw me they knew exactly what was happening.They scattered and ran like hell.Abel was quick. Good Lord, he was fast. The ringleader had made a dash for itand was trying to climb over a wall. Abel grabbed him, pulled him down, anddragged him back. Then he stripped a branch off the tree, a switch, and startedwhipping him. He whipped the shit out of him, and I loved it. I have never enjoyedanything as much as I enjoyed that moment. Revenge truly is sweet. It takes you toa dark place, but, man, it satisfies a thirst.Then there was the strangest moment where it flipped. I caught a glimpse ofthe look of terror in the boy’s face, and I realized that Abel had gone past gettingrevenge for me. He wasn’t doing this to teach the kid a lesson. He was just beatinghim. He was a grown man venting his rage on a twelve-year-old boy. In an instantI went from Yes, I got my revenge to No, no, no. Too much. Too much. Oh shit. Ohshit. Oh shit. Dear God, what have I done?Once this kid was beat to shit, Abel dragged him over to the car and held himup in front of me. “Say you’re sorry.” The kid was whimpering, trembling. Helooked me in the eye, and I had never seen fear in someone’s eyes like I saw in his.He’d been beaten by a stranger in a way I don’t think he’d ever been beaten before.He said he was sorry, but it was like his apology wasn’t for what he’d done to me.

It was like he was sorry for every bad thing he’d ever done in his life, because hedidn’t know there could be a punishment like this.Looking in that boy’s eyes, I realized how much he and I had in common. Hewas a kid. I was a kid. He was crying. I was crying. He was a colored boy in SouthAfrica, taught how to hate and how to hate himself. Who had bullied him that heneeded to bully me? He’d made me feel fear, and to get my revenge I’d unleashedmy own hell on his world. But I knew I’d done a terrible thing.Once the kid apologized, Abel shoved him away and kicked him. “Go.” The kidran off, and we drove back to the house in silence. At home Abel and my mom gotin a huge fight. She was always on him about his temper. “You can’t go aroundhitting other people’s children! You’re not the law! This anger, this is no way tolive!”A couple of hours later this kid’s dad drove over to our house to confrontAbel. Abel went out to the gate, and I watched from inside the house. By that pointAbel was truly drunk. This kid’s dad had no idea what he was walking into. He wassome mild-mannered, middle-aged guy. I don’t remember much about him,because I was watching Abel the whole time. I never took my eyes off him. I knewthat’s where the danger was.Abel didn’t have a gun yet; he bought that later. But Abel didn’t need a gun toput the fear of God in you. I watched as he got right in this guy’s face. I couldn’thear what the other man was saying, but I heard Abel. “Don’t fuck with me. I willkill you.” The guy turned quickly and got back in his car and drove away. Hethought he was coming to defend the honor of his family. He left happy to escapewith his life.

When I was growing up, my mom spent a lot of time trying to teach me about women. Shewas always giving me lessons, little talks, pieces of advice. It was never a full-blown, sit-downlecture about relationships. It was more like tidbits along the way. And I never understoodwhy, because I was a kid. The only women in my life were my mom and my grandmother andmy aunt and my cousin. I had no love interest whatsoever, yet my mom insisted. She would gooff on a whole range of things.“Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be theman of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it’s whoyou are. Being more of a man doesn’t mean your woman has to be less than you.”“Trevor, make sure your woman is the woman in your life. Don’t be one of these men whomakes his wife compete with his mother. A man with a wife cannot be beholden to hismother.”The smallest thing could prompt her. I’d walk through the house on the way to my roomand say, “Hey, Mom” without glancing up. She’d say, “No, Trevor! You look at me. Youacknowledge me. Show me that I exist to you, because the way you treat me is the way you willtreat your woman. Women like to be noticed. Come and acknowledge me and let me know thatyou see me. Don’t just see me when you need something.”These little lessons were always about grown-up relationships, funnily enough. She was sopreoccupied with teaching me how to be a man that she never taught me how to be a boy. Howto talk to a girl or pass a girl a note in class—there was none of that. She only told me aboutadult things. She would even lecture me about sex. As I was a kid, that would get veryawkward.“Trevor, don’t forget: You’re having sex with a woman in her mind before you’re havingsex with her in her vagina.”“Trevor, foreplay begins during the day. It doesn’t begin in the bedroom.”I’d be like, “What? What is foreplay? What does that even mean?”

 

A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD,OCCASIONALLY TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLYHUMILIATING EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OFTHE HEART, PART I: VALENTINE’S DAYIt was my first year at H. A. Jack, the primary school I transferred to after leavingMaryvale. Valentine’s Day was approaching fast. I was twelve years old, and I’dnever done Valentine’s Day before. We didn’t celebrate it in Catholic school. Iunderstood Valentine’s Day, as a concept. The naked baby shoots you with anarrow and you fall in love. I got that part. But this was my first time beingintroduced to it as an activity. At H. A. Jack, Valentine’s Day was used as afundraiser. Pupils were going around selling flowers and cards, and I had to go aska friend what was happening.“What is this?” I said. “What are we doing?”“Oh, you know,” she said, “it’s Valentine’s Day. You pick a special person andyou tell them that you love them, and they love you back.”Wow, I thought, that seems intense. But I hadn’t been shot by Cupid’s arrow,and I didn’t know of anyone getting shot on my behalf. I had no clue what wasgoing on. All week, the girls in school kept saying, “Who’s your valentine? Who’syour valentine?” I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Finally one of the girls,a white girl, said, “You should ask Maylene.” The other kids agreed. “Yes, Maylene.You should definitely ask Maylene. You have to ask Maylene. You guys are perfectfor each other.”Maylene was a girl I used to walk home from school with. We lived in the citynow, me, my mom and Abel, who was now my stepfather, and my new babybrother, Andrew. We’d sold our house in Eden Park to invest in Abel’s new garage.Then that fell apart, and we ended up moving to a neighborhood called HighlandsNorth, a thirty-minute walk from H. A. Jack. A group of us would leave schooltogether every afternoon, each kid peeling off and going their separate way whenwe reached their house. Maylene and I lived the farthest, so we’d always be the lasttwo. We’d walk together until we got where we needed to go, and then we’d partways.Maylene was cool. She was good at tennis, smart, cute. I liked her. I didn’thave a crush on her; I wasn’t even thinking about girls that way yet. I just likedhanging out with her. Maylene was also the only colored girl in school. I was theonly mixed kid in school. We were the only two people who looked like each other.

The white girls were insistent about me asking Maylene to be my valentine. Theywere like, “Trevor, you have to ask her. You’re the only two. It’s yourresponsibility.” It was like our species was going to die out if we didn’t mate andcarry on. Which I’ve learned in life is something that white people do without evenrealizing it. “You two look the same, therefore we must arrange for you to havesex.”I honestly hadn’t thought of asking Maylene, but when the girls brought it up,that thing happened where someone plants the idea in your head and it changesyour perception.“Maylene’s totally got a thing for you.”“Does she?”“Yeah, you guys are great together!”“Are we?”“Totally.”“Well, okay. If you say so.”I liked Maylene as much as I liked anyone, I suppose. Mostly I think I likedthe idea of being liked. I decided I’d ask her to be my valentine, but I had no ideahow to do it. I didn’t know the first thing about having a girlfriend. I had to betaught the whole love bureaucracy of the school. There was the thing where youdon’t actually talk straight to the person. You have your group of friends and shehas her group of friends, and your group of friends has to go to her group offriends and say, “Okay, Trevor likes Maylene. He wants her to be his valentine.We’re in favor. We’re ready to sign off with your approval.” Her friends say, “Okay.Sounds good. We have to run it by Maylene.” They go to Maylene. They consult.They tell her what they think. “Trevor says he likes you. We’re in favor. We thinkyou’d be good together. What do you say?” Maylene says, “I like Trevor.” They say,“Okay. Let’s move forward.” They come back to us. “Maylene says she approvesand she’s waiting for Trevor’s Valentine’s Day advance.”The girls told me this process was what needed to happen. I said, “Cool. Let’sdo it.” The friends sorted it out, Maylene got on board, and I was all set.The week before Valentine’s, Maylene and I were walking home together, andI was trying to get up the courage to ask her. I was so nervous. I’d never doneanything like it. I already knew the answer; her friends had told me she’d say yes.It’s like being in Congress. You know you have the votes before you go to the floor,but it’s still difficult because anything could happen. I didn’t know how to do it, allI knew was I wanted it to be perfect, so I waited until we were standing outsideMcDonald’s. Then I mustered up all of my courage and turned to her.“Hey, Valentine’s Day is coming up, and I was wondering, would you be myvalentine?”

“Yes. I’ll be your valentine.”And then, under the golden arches, we kissed. It was my first time everkissing a girl. It was just a peck, our lips touched for only a few seconds, but it setoff explosions in my head. Yes! Oh, yes. This. I don’t know what this is, but I likeit. Something had awakened. And it was right outside McDonald’s, so it was extraspecial.Now I was truly excited. I had a valentine. I had a girlfriend. I spent the wholeweek thinking about Maylene, wanting to make her Valentine’s Day as memorableas I could. I saved up my pocket money and bought her flowers and a teddy bearand a card. I wrote a poem with her name in the card, which was really hardbecause there aren’t many good words that rhyme with Maylene. (Machine?Ravine? Sardine?) Then the big day came. I got my Valentine’s card and theflowers and the teddy bear and got them ready and took them to school. I was thehappiest boy on earth.The teachers had set aside a period before recess for everyone to exchangevalentines. There was a corridor outside our classrooms where I knew Maylenewould be, and I waited for her there. All around me, love was in bloom. Boys andgirls exchanging cards and gifts, laughing and giggling and stealing kisses. Iwaited and waited. Finally Maylene showed up and walked over to me. I was aboutto say “Happy Valentine’s Day!” when she stopped me and said, “Oh, hi, Trevor.Um, listen, I can’t be your girlfriend anymore. Lorenzo asked me to be hisvalentine and I can’t have two valentines, so I’m his girlfriend now and not yours.”She said it so matter-of-factly that I had no idea how to process it. This wasmy first time having a girlfriend, so at first I thought, Huh, maybe this is just howit goes.“Oh, okay,” I said. “Well, um…happy Valentine’s Day.”I held out the card and the flowers and the teddy bear. She took them andsaid thanks, and she was gone.I felt like someone had taken a gun and shot holes in every part of me. But atthe same time some part of me said, “Well, this makes sense.” Lorenzo waseverything I wasn’t. He was popular. He was white. He’d upset the balance ofeverything by asking out the only colored girl in school. Girls loved him, and hewas dumb as rocks. A nice guy, but kind of a bad boy. Girls did his homework forhim; he was that guy. He was really good-looking, too. It was like when he wascreating his character he traded in all his intelligence points for beauty points. Istood no chance.As devastated as I was, I understood why Maylene made the choice that shedid. I would have picked Lorenzo over me, too. All the other kids were running upand down the corridors and out on the playground, laughing and smiling withtheir red and pink cards and flowers, and I went back to the classroom and sat bymyself and waited for the bell to ring.

Petrol for the car, like food, was an expense we could not avoid, but my mom could get moremileage out of a tank of petrol than any human who has ever been on a road in the history ofautomobiles. She knew every trick. Driving around Johannesburg in our rusty oldVolkswagen, every time she stopped in traffic, she’d turn off the car. Then the traffic wouldstart and she’d turn the car on again. That stop-start technology that they use in hybrid carsnow? That was my mom. She was a hybrid car before hybrid cars came out. She was themaster of coasting. She knew every downhill between work and school, between school andhome. She knew exactly where the gradient shifted to put it into neutral. She could time thetraffic lights so we could coast through intersections without using the brakes or losingmomentum.There were times when we would be in traffic and we had so little money for petrol that Iwould have to push the car. If we were stuck in gridlock, my mom would turn the car off and itwas my job to get out and push it forward six inches at a time. People would pitch up and offerto help.“Are you stuck?”“Nope. We’re fine.”“You sure?”“Yep.”“Can we help you?”“Nope.”“Do you need a tow?”And what do you say? The truth? “Thanks, but we’re just so poor my mom makes her kidpush the car”?That was some of the most embarrassing shit in my life, pushing the car to school like thefucking Flintstones. Because the other kids were coming in on that same road to go to school.I’d take my blazer off so that no one could tell what school I went to, and I would bury my headand push the car, hoping no one would recognize me.

OUTSIDERAfter finishing primary school at H. A. Jack, I started grade eight at SandringhamHigh School. Even after apartheid, most black people still lived in the townshipsand the areas formerly designated as homelands, where the only availablegovernment schools were the broken remnants of the Bantu system. Wealthywhite kids—along with the few black people and colored people and Indians whohad money or could get scholarships—were holed up in private schools, whichwere super-expensive but virtually guaranteed entry into university. Sandringhamwas what we call a Model C school, which meant it was a mix of government andprivate, similar to charter schools in America. The place was huge, a thousand kidson sprawling grounds with tennis courts, sports fields, and a swimming pool.Being a Model C school and not a government school, Sandringham drew kidsfrom all over, making it a near-perfect microcosm of post-apartheid South Africaas a whole—a perfect example of what South Africa has the potential to be. We hadrich white kids, a bunch of middle-class white kids, and some working-class whitekids. We had black kids who were newly rich, black kids who were middle-class,and black kids from the townships. We had colored kids and Indian kids, and evena handful of Chinese kids, too. The pupils were as integrated as they could begiven that apartheid had just ended. At H. A. Jack, race was broken up into blocks.Sandringham was more like a spectrum.South African schools don’t have cafeterias. At Sandringham we’d buy ourlunch at what we call the tuck shop, a little canteen, and then have free rein to gowherever we wanted on the school grounds to eat—the quad, the courtyard, theplayground, wherever. Kids would break off and cluster into their cliques andgroups. People were still grouped by color in most cases, but you could see howthey all blended and shaded into one another. The kids who played soccer weremostly black. The kids who played tennis were mostly white. The kids who playedcricket were a mix. The Chinese kids would hang out next to the prefab buildings.The matrics, what South Africans call seniors, would hang out on the quad. Thepopular, pretty girls would hang out over here, and computer geeks would hangout over there. To the extent that the groupings were racial, it was because of theways race overlapped class and geography out in the real world. Suburban kidshung out with suburban kids. Township kids hung out with township kids.

At break, as the only mixed kid out of a thousand, I faced the samepredicament I had on the playground at H. A. Jack: Where was I supposed to go?Even with so many different groups to choose from, I wasn’t a natural constituentof any particular one. I obviously wasn’t Indian or Chinese. The colored kidswould shit on me all the time for being too black. So I wasn’t welcome there. Asalways, I was adept enough with white kids not to get bullied by them, but thewhite kids were always going shopping, going to the movies, going on trips—things that required money. We didn’t have any money, so I was out of the mixthere, too. The group I felt the most affinity for was the poor black kids. I hung outwith them and got along with them, but most of them took minibuses to schoolfrom way out in the townships, from Soweto, from Tembisa, from Alexandra. Theyrode to school as friends and went home as friends. They had their own groups.Weekends and school holidays, they were hanging out with one another and Icouldn’t visit. Soweto was a forty-minute drive from my house. We didn’t havemoney for petrol. After school I was on my own. Weekends I was on my own. Everthe outsider, I created my own strange little world. I did it out of necessity. Ineeded a way to fit in. I also needed money, a way to buy the same snacks and dothe things that the other kids were doing. Which is how I became the tuck-shopguy.Thanks to my long walk to school, I was late every single day. I’d have to stopoff in the prefect’s office to write my name down for detention. I was the patronsaint of detention. Already late, I’d run to join my morning classes—math,English, biology, whatever. The last period before break was assembly. The pupilswould come together in the assembly hall, each grade seated row by row, and theteachers and the prefects would get up onstage and go over the business of whatwas happening in the school—announcements, awards, that sort of thing. Thenames of the kids with detention were announced at every assembly, and I wasalways one of them. Always. Every single day. It was a running joke. The prefectwould say, “Detentions for today…” and I would stand up automatically. It waslike the Oscars and I was Meryl Streep. There was one time I stood up and thenthe prefect named the five people and I wasn’t one of them. Everyone burst outlaughing. Somebody yelled out, “Where’s Trevor?!” The prefect looked at thepaper and shook his head. “Nope.” The entire hall erupted with cheers andapplause. “Yay!!!!”Then, immediately after assembly, there would be a race to the tuck shopbecause the queue to buy food was so long. Every minute you spent in the queuewas working against your break time. The sooner you got your food, the longeryou had to eat, play a game of soccer, or hang out. Also, if you got there late, thebest food was gone.Two things were true about me at that age. One, I was still the fastest kid inschool. And two, I had no pride. The second we were dismissed from assembly Iwould run like a bat out of hell to the tuck shop so I could be the first one there. Iwas always first in line. I became notorious for being that guy, so much so that

people started coming up to me in line. “Hey, can you buy this for me?” Whichwould piss off the kids behind me because it was basically cutting the line. Sopeople started approaching me during assembly. They’d say, “Hey, I’ve got tenrand. If you buy my food for me, I’ll give you two.” That’s when I learned: time ismoney. I realized people would pay me to buy their food because I was willing torun for it. I started telling everyone at assembly, “Place your orders. Give me a listof what you want, give me a percentage of what you’re going to spend, and I’ll buyyour food for you.”I was an overnight success. Fat guys were my number-one customers. Theyloved food, but couldn’t run. I had all these rich, fat white kids who were like,“This is fantastic! My parents spoil me, I’ve got money, and now I’ve got a way Ican get food without having to work for it—and I still get my break.” I had so manycustomers I was turning kids away. I had a rule: I would take five orders a day,high bidders only. I’d make so much that I could buy my lunch using other kids’money and keep the lunch money my mom gave me for pocket cash. Then I couldafford to catch a bus home instead of walking or save up to buy whatever. Everyday I’d take orders, assembly would end, and I’d make my mad dash and buyeverybody’s hot dogs and Cokes and muffins. If you paid me extra you could eventell me where you’d be and I’d deliver it to you.I’d found my niche. Since I belonged to no group I learned to move seamlesslybetween groups. I floated. I was a chameleon, still, a cultural chameleon. I learnedhow to blend. I could play sports with the jocks. I could talk computers with thenerds. I could jump in the circle and dance with the township kids. I poppedaround to everyone, working, chatting, telling jokes, making deliveries.I was like a weed dealer, but of food. The weed guy is always welcome at theparty. He’s not a part of the circle, but he’s invited into the circle temporarilybecause of what he can offer. That’s who I was. Always an outsider. As theoutsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can gothe other way. You protect yourself by opening up. You don’t ask to be acceptedfor everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you’re willing to share. Forme it was humor. I learned that even though I didn’t belong to one group, I couldbe a part of any group that was laughing. I’d drop in, pass out the snacks, tell a fewjokes. I’d perform for them. I’d catch a bit of their conversation, learn more abouttheir group, and then leave. I never overstayed my welcome. I wasn’t popular, butI wasn’t an outcast. I was everywhere with everybody, and at the same time I wasall by myself.

I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumedwith regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. Wespend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing weshould fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal questionyou will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” Youwill never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.

 

A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD,OCCASIONALLY TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLYHUMILIATING EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OFTHE HEART, PART II: THE CRUSHIn high school, the attention of girls was not an affliction I suffered from. I wasn’tthe hot guy in class. I wasn’t even the cute guy in class. I was ugly. Puberty was notkind to me. My acne was so bad that people used to ask what was wrong with me,like I’d had an allergic reaction to something. It was the kind of acne that qualifiesas a medical condition. Acne vulgaris, the doctor called it. We’re not talking aboutpimples, kids. We’re talking pustules—big, pus-filled blackheads and whiteheads.They started on my forehead, spread down the sides of my face, and covered mycheeks and neck and ravaged me everywhere.Being poor didn’t help. Not only could I not afford a decent haircut, leavingme with a huge, unruly Afro, but my mother also used to get angry at the fact thatI grew out of my school uniforms too fast, so to save money she started buying myclothes three sizes too big. My blazer was too long and my pants were too baggyand my shoes flopped around. I was a clown. And of course, Murphy’s Law, theyear my mom started buying my clothes too big was the year that I stoppedgrowing. So now I was never going to grow into my clown clothes and I was stuckbeing a clown. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I was tall, buteven there I was gangly and awkward-looking. Duck feet. High ass. Nothingworked.After suffering my Valentine’s Day heartbreak at the hands of Maylene andthe handsome, charming Lorenzo, I learned a valuable lesson about dating. What Ilearned was that cool guys get girls, and funny guys get to hang out with the coolguys with their girls. I was not a cool guy; therefore I did not have girls. Iunderstood that formula very quickly and I knew my place. I didn’t ask girls out. Ididn’t have a girlfriend. I didn’t even try.For me to try to get a girl would have upset the natural order of things. Part ofmy success as the tuck-shop guy was that I was welcome everywhere, and I waswelcome everywhere because I was nobody. I was the acne-ridden clown withduck feet in floppy shoes. I wasn’t a threat to the guys. I wasn’t a threat to thegirls. The minute I became somebody, I risked no longer being welcomed asnobody. The pretty girls were already spoken for. The popular guys had stakedtheir claim. They would say, “I like Zuleika,” and you knew that meant if you triedanything with Zuleika there’d be a fight. In the interest of survival, the smart move

was to stay on the fringe, stay out of trouble.At Sandringham, the only time girls in class looked at me was when theywanted me to pass a letter to the hot guy in class. But there was one girl I knewnamed Johanna. Johanna and I had been at the same school intermittently ourwhole lives. We were in preschool at Maryvale together. Then she left and went toanother school. Then we were in primary school at H. A. Jack together. Then sheleft and went to another school. Then finally we were at Sandringham together.Because of that we became friends.Johanna was one of the popular girls. Her best friend was Zaheera. Johannawas beautiful. Zaheera was stunning. Zaheera was colored, Cape Malay. Shelooked like Salma Hayek. Johanna was out and about and kissing boys, so the guyswere all into her. Zaheera, as beautiful as she was, was extremely shy, so thereweren’t as many guys after her.Johanna and Zaheera were always together. They were one grade below me,but in terms of popularity they were three grades above me. Still I got to hang outwith them because I knew Johanna and we had this thing from being in differentschools together. Dating girls may have been out of the question for me, buttalking to them was not, because I could make them laugh. Human beings like tolaugh, and lucky for me pretty girls are human beings. So I could relate to them inthat way, but never in the other way. I knew this because whenever they stoppedlaughing at my jokes and stories they’d say, “So how do you think I can get Danielto ask me out?” I always had a clear idea of where I stood.Outwardly, I had carefully cultivated my status as the funny, nonthreateningguy, but secretly I had the hugest crush on Zaheera. She was so pretty and sofunny. We’d hang out and have great conversations. I thought about herconstantly, but for the life of me I never considered myself worthy of dating her. Itold myself, I’m going to have a crush on her forever, and that’s all that’s evergoing to happen.At a certain point I decided to map out a strategy. I decided I’d be best friendswith Zaheera and stay friends with her long enough to ask her to the matric dance,what we call our senior prom. Mind you, we were in grade nine at this point. Thematric dance was three years away. But I decided to play the long game. I was like,Yep, just gonna take my time. Because that’s what happens in the movies, right?I’d seen my American high school movies. You hang around long enough as thefriendly good guy and the girl dates a bunch of handsome jerks, and then one dayshe turns around and goes, “Oh, it’s you. It was always you. You’re the guy I wassupposed to be with all along.”That was my plan. It was foolproof.I hung out with Zaheera every chance I got. We’d talk about boys, which onesshe liked and which ones liked her. I’d give her advice. At one point she got set upwith this guy Gary. They started dating. Gary was in the popular group but kind of

shy and Zaheera was in the popular group but kind of shy, so his friends and herfriends set them up together, like an arranged marriage. But Zaheera didn’t likeGary at all. She told me. We talked about everything.One day, I don’t know how, but I plucked up the courage to ask Zaheera forher phone number, which was a big deal back then because it wasn’t like cellphonenumbers where everybody has everyone’s number for texting and everything. Thiswas the landline. To her house. Where her parents might answer. We were talkingone afternoon at school and I asked, “Can I get your phone number? Maybe I cancall you and we can talk at home sometime.” She said yes, and my mind exploded.What???!!!! A girl is giving me her phone number???!!! This is insane!!! What doI do??!! I was so nervous. I’ll never forget her telling me the digits one by one as Iwrote them down, trying to keep my hand from shaking. We said goodbye andwent our separate ways to class, and I was like, Okay, Trevor. Play it cool. Don’tcall her right away. I called her that night. At seven. She’d given me her numberat two. That was me being cool. Dude, don’t call her at five. That’s too obvious.Call her at seven.I phoned her house that night. Her mom answered. I said, “May I speak toZaheera, please?” Her mom called her, and she came to the phone and we talked.For like an hour. After that we started talking more, at school, on the phone. Inever told her how I felt. Never made a move. Nothing. I was always too scared.Zaheera and Gary broke up. Then they got back together. Then they broke up.Then they got back together. They kissed once, but she didn’t like it, so they neverkissed again. Then they broke up for real. I bided my time through it all. I watchedPopular Gary go down in flames, and I was still the good friend. Yep, the plan isworking. Matric dance, here we come. Only two and a half years to go…Then we had the mid-year school holidays. The day we came back, Zaheerawasn’t at school. Then she wasn’t at school the next day. Then she wasn’t at schoolthe day after that. Eventually I went and tracked down Johanna on the quad.“Hey, where’s Zaheera?” I said. “She hasn’t been around for a while. Is shesick?”“No,” she said. “Didn’t anyone tell you? She left the school. She doesn’t gohere anymore.”“What?”“Yeah, she left.”My first thought was, Wow, okay. That’s news. I should give her a call tocatch up.“What school did she move to?” I asked.“She didn’t. Her dad got a job in America. During the break they moved there.They’ve emigrated.”

“What?”“Yeah. She’s gone. She was such a good friend, too. I’m really sad. Are you assad as I am?”“Uh…yeah,” I said, still trying to process everything. “I liked Zaheera. She wasreally cool.”“Yeah, she was super sad, too, because she had such a huge crush on you. Shewas always waiting for you to ask her out. Okay, I gotta go to class! Bye!”She ran off and left me standing there, stunned. She’d hit me with so muchinformation at once, first that Zaheera was gone, then that she had left forAmerica, and then that she’d liked me all along. It was like I’d been hit by threesuccessive waves of heartbreak, each one bigger than the last. My mind racedthrough all the hours we’d spent talking on the quad, on the phone, all the times Icould have said, “Hey, Zaheera, I like you. Will you be my girlfriend?” Ten wordsthat might have changed my life if I’d had the courage to say them. But I hadn’t,and now she was gone.

In every nice neighborhood there’s one white family that Does Not Give a Fuck. You know thefamily I’m talking about. They don’t do their lawn, don’t paint the fence, don’t fix the roof.Their house is shit. My mom found that house and bought it, which is how she snuck a blackfamily into a place as white as Highlands North.Most black people integrating into white suburbs were moving to places like Bramley andLombardy East. But for some reason my mom chose Highlands North. It was a suburban area,lots of shopping. Working people, mostly. Not wealthy but stable and middle-class. Olderhouses, but still a nice place to live. In Soweto I was the only white kid in the black township.In Eden Park I was the only mixed kid in the colored area. In Highlands North I was the onlyblack kid in the white suburb—and by “only” I mean only. In Highlands North the white nevertook flight. It was a largely Jewish neighborhood, and Jewish people don’t flee. They’re donefleeing. They’ve already fled. They get to a place, build their shul, and hold it down. Since thewhite people around us weren’t leaving, there weren’t a lot of families like ours moving inbehind us.I didn’t make any friends in Highlands North for the longest time. I had an easier timemaking friends in Eden Park, to be honest. In the suburbs, everyone lived behind walls. Thewhite neighborhoods of Johannesburg were built on white fear—fear of black crime, fear ofblack uprisings and reprisals—and as a result virtually every house sits behind a six-foot wall,and on top of that wall is electric wire. Everyone lives in a plush, fancy maximum-securityprison. There is no sitting on the front porch, no saying hi to the neighbors, no kids runningback and forth between houses. I’d ride my bike around the neighborhood for hours withoutseeing a single kid. I’d hear them, though. They were all meeting up behind brick walls forplaydates I wasn’t invited to. I’d hear people laughing and playing and I’d get off my bike andcreep up and peek over the wall and see a bunch of white kids splashing around in someone’sswimming pool. I was like a Peeping Tom, but for friendship.It was only after a year or so that I figured out the key to making black friends in thesuburbs: the children of domestics. Many domestic workers in South Africa, when they getpregnant they get fired. Or, if they’re lucky, the family they work for lets them stay on and theycan have the baby, but then the baby goes to live with relatives in the homelands. Then theblack mother raises the white children, seeing her own child only once a year at the holidays.But a handful of families would let their domestics keep their children with them, living inlittle maids’ quarters or flatlets in the backyard.For a long time, those kids were my only friends.

COLORBLINDAt Sandringham I got to know this one kid, Teddy. Funny guy, charming as hell.My mom used to call him Bugs Bunny; he had a cheeky smile with two big teeththat stuck out the front of his mouth. Teddy and I got along like a house on fire,one of those friends where you start hanging out and from that day forward you’renever apart. We were both naughty as shit, too. With Teddy, I’d finally metsomeone who made me feel normal. I was the terror in my family. He was theterror in his family. When you put us together it was mayhem. Walking homefrom school we’d throw rocks through windows, just to see them shatter, and thenwe’d run away. We got detention together all the time. The teachers, the pupils,the principal, everyone at school knew: Teddy and Trevor, thick as thieves.Teddy’s mom worked as a domestic for a family in Linksfield, a wealthysuburb near school. Linksfield was a long walk from my house, nearly fortyminutes, but still doable. Walking around was pretty much all I did back then,anyway. I couldn’t afford to do anything else, and I couldn’t afford to get aroundany other way. If you liked walking, you were my friend. Teddy and I walked allover Johannesburg together. I’d walk to Teddy’s house and we’d hang out there.Then we’d walk back to my house and hang out there. We’d walk from my housedown to the city center, which was like a three-hour hike, just to hang out, andthen we’d walk all the way back.Friday and Saturday nights we’d walk to the mall and hang out. The BalfourPark Shopping Mall was a few blocks from my house. It’s not a big mall, but it haseverything—an arcade, a cinema, restaurants, South Africa’s version of Target,South Africa’s version of the Gap. Then, once we were at the mall, since we neverhad any money to shop or watch movies or buy food, we’d just wander aroundinside.One night we were at the mall and most of the shops were closed, but thecinema was still showing movies so the building was still open. There was thisstationery shop that sold greeting cards and magazines, and it didn’t have a door,so when it closed at night there was only a metal gate, like a trellis, that was pulledacross the entrance and padlocked. Walking past this shop, Teddy and I realizedthat if we put our arms through the trellis we could reach this rack of chocolatesjust inside. And these weren’t just any chocolates—they were alcohol-filledchocolates. I loved alcohol. Loved loved loved it. My whole life I’d steal sips of

grown-ups’ drinks whenever I could.We reached in, grabbed a few, drank the liquor inside, and then gobbleddown the chocolates. We’d hit the jackpot. We started going back again and againto steal more. We’d wait for the shops to start to close, then we’d go and sit againstthe gate, acting like we were just hanging out. We’d check to make sure the coastwas clear, and then one of us would reach in, grab a chocolate, and drink thewhiskey. Reach in, grab a chocolate, drink the rum. Reach in, grab a chocolate,drink the brandy. We did this every weekend for at least a month, having the besttime. Then we pushed our luck too far.It was a Saturday night. We were hanging out at the entrance to the stationeryshop, leaning up against the gate. I reached in to grab a chocolate, and at thatexact moment a mall cop came around the corner and saw me with my arm in upto my shoulder. I brought my hand out with a bunch of chocolates in it. It wasalmost like a movie. I saw him. He saw me. His eyes went wide. I tried to walkaway, acting natural. Then he shouted out, “Hey! Stop!”And the chase was on. We bolted, heading for the doors. I knew if a guard cutus off at the exit we’d be trapped, so we were hauling ass as fast as we could. Wecleared the exit. The second we hit the parking lot, mall cops were coming at usfrom every direction, a dozen of them at least. I was running with my head down.These guards knew me. I was in that mall all the time. The guards knew my mom,too. She did her banking at that mall. If they even caught a glimpse of who I was, Iwas dead.We ran straight across the parking lot, ducking and weaving between parkedcars, the guards right behind us, yelling. We made it to the petrol station out at theroad, ran through there, and hooked left up the main road. They chased andchased and we ran and ran, and it was awesome. The risk of getting caught washalf the fun of being naughty, and now the chase was on. I was loving it. I wasshitting myself, but also loving it. This was my turf. This was my neighborhood.You couldn’t catch me in my neighborhood. I knew every alley and every street,every back wall to climb over, every fence with a gap big enough to slip through. Iknew every shortcut you could possibly imagine. As a kid, wherever I went,whatever building I was in, I was always plotting my escape. You know, in caseshit went down. In reality I was a nerdy kid with almost no friends, but in mymind I was an important and dangerous man who needed to know where everycamera was and where all the exit points were.I knew we couldn’t run forever. We needed a plan. As Teddy and I bookedpast the fire station there was a road off to the left, a dead end that ran into ametal fence. I knew that there was a hole in the fence to squeeze through and onthe far side was an empty field behind the mall that took you back to the mainroad and back to my house. A grown-up couldn’t fit through the hole, but a kidcould. All my years of imagining the life of a secret agent for myself finally paidoff. Now that I needed an escape, I had one.

“Teddy, this way!” I yelled.“No, it’s a dead end!”“We can get through! Follow me!”He didn’t. I turned and ran into the dead end. Teddy broke the other way.Half the mall cops followed him, half followed me. I got to the fence and knewexactly how to squirm through. Head, then shoulder, one leg, then twist, then theother leg—done. I was through. The guards hit the fence behind me and couldn’tfollow. I ran across the field to a fence on the far side, popped through there, andthen I was right on the road, three blocks from my house. I slipped my hands intomy pockets and casually walked home, another harmless pedestrian out for astroll.Once I got back to my house I waited for Teddy. He didn’t show up. I waitedthirty minutes, forty minutes, an hour. No Teddy.Fuck.I ran to Teddy’s house in Linksfield. No Teddy. Monday morning I went toschool. Still no Teddy.Fuck.Now I was worried. After school I went home and checked at my house again,nothing. Teddy’s house again, nothing. Then I ran back home.An hour later Teddy’s parents showed up. My mom greeted them at the door.“Teddy’s been arrested for shoplifting,” they said.Fuuuck.I eavesdropped on their whole conversation from the other room. From thestart my mom was certain I was involved.“Well, where was Trevor?” she asked.“Teddy said he wasn’t with Trevor,” they said.My mom was skeptical. “Hmm. Are you sure Trevor wasn’t involved?”“No, apparently not. The cops said there was another kid, but he got away.”“So it was Trevor.”“No, we asked Teddy, and he said it wasn’t Trevor. He said it was some otherkid.”“Huh…okay.” My mom called me in. “Do you know about this thing?”“What thing?”“Teddy was caught shoplifting.”“Whhaaat?” I played dumb. “Noooo. That’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Teddy?

No.”“Where were you?” my mom asked.“I was at home.”“But you’re always with Teddy.”I shrugged. “Not on this occasion, I suppose.”For a moment my mom thought she’d caught me red-handed, but Teddy’dgiven me a solid alibi. I went back to my room, thinking I was in the clear.—The next day I was in class and my name was called over the PA system. “TrevorNoah, report to the principal’s office.” All the kids were like, “Ooooohhh.” Theannouncements could be heard in every classroom, so now, collectively, the wholeschool knew I was in trouble. I got up and walked to the office and waitedanxiously on an uncomfortable wooden bench outside the door.Finally the principal, Mr. Friedman, walked out. “Trevor, come in.” Waitinginside his office was the head of mall security, two uniformed police officers, andmy and Teddy’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Vorster. A roomful of silent, stone-facedwhite authority figures stood over me, the guilty young black man. My heart waspounding. I took a seat.“Trevor, I don’t know if you know this,” Mr. Friedman said, “but Teddy wasarrested the other day.”“What?” I played the whole thing again. “Teddy? Oh, no. What for?”“For shoplifting. He’s been expelled, and he won’t be coming back to school.We know there was another boy involved, and these officers are going around tothe schools in the area to investigate. We called you here because Mrs. Vorstertells us you’re Teddy’s best friend, and we want to know: Do you know anythingabout this?”I shook my head. “No, I don’t know anything.”“Do you know who Teddy was with?”“No.”“Okay.” He stood up and walked over to a television in the corner of the room.“Trevor, the police have video footage of the whole thing. We’d like you to take alook at it.”Fuuuuu​uuuuu​uuuuu​uuck.My heart was pounding in my chest. Well, life, it’s been fun, I thought. I’mgoing to get expelled. I’m going to go to jail. This is it.Mr. Friedman pressed Play on the VCR. The tape started. It was grainy, black-and-white security-camera footage, but you could see what was happening plain

as day. They even had it from multiple angles: Me and Teddy reaching through thegate. Me and Teddy racing for the door. They had the whole thing. After a fewseconds, Mr. Friedman reached up and paused it with me, from a few meters out,freeze-framed in the middle of the screen. In my mind, this was when he wasgoing to turn to me and say, “Now would you like to confess?” He didn’t.“Trevor,” he said, “do you know of any white kids that Teddy hangs out with?”I nearly shat myself. “What?!”I looked at the screen and I realized: Teddy was dark. I am light; I have oliveskin. But the camera can’t expose for light and dark at the same time. So when youput me on a black-and-white screen next to a black person, the camera doesn’tknow what to do. If the camera has to pick, it picks me as white. My color getsblown out. In this video, there was a black person and a white person. But still: Itwas me. The picture wasn’t great, and my facial features were a bit blurry, but ifyou looked closely: It was me. I was Teddy’s best friend. I was Teddy’s only friend.I was the single most likely accomplice. You had to at least suspect that it was me.They didn’t. They grilled me for a good ten minutes, but only because they were sosure that I had to know who this white kid was.“Trevor, you’re Teddy’s best friend. Tell us the truth. Who is this kid?”“I don’t know.”“You don’t recognize him at all?”“No.”“Teddy never mentioned him to you?”“Never.”At a certain point Mrs. Vorster just started running through a list of all thewhite kids she thought it could be.“Is it David?”“No.”“Rian?”“No.”“Frederik?”“No.”I kept waiting for it to be a trick, for them to turn and say, “It’s you!” Theydidn’t. At a certain point, I felt so invisible I almost wanted to take credit. I wantedto jump up and point at the TV and say, “Are you people blind?! That’s me! Canyou not see that that’s me?!” But of course I didn’t. And they couldn’t. Thesepeople had been so fucked by their own construct of race that they could not seethat the white person they were looking for was sitting right in front of them.

Eventually they sent me back to class. I spent the rest of the day and the nextcouple of weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for my mom to get thecall. “We’ve got him! We figured it out!” But the call never came.

South Africa has eleven official languages. After democracy came, people said, “Okay, how dowe create order without having different groups feel like they’ve been left out of power again?”English is the international language and the language of money and of the media, so we hadto keep that. Most people were forced to learn at least some Afrikaans, so it’s useful to keepthat, too. Plus we didn’t want the white minority to feel ostracized in the new South Africa, orelse they’d take all their money and leave.Of the African languages, Zulu has the largest number of native speakers, but we couldn’tkeep that without also having Xhosa and Tswana and Ndebele. Then there’s Swazi, Tsonga,Venda, Sotho, and Pedi. We tried to keep all the major groups happy, so the next thing weknew we’d made eleven languages official languages. And those are just the languages bigenough to demand recognition; there are dozens more.It’s the Tower of Babel in South Africa. Every single day. Every day you see peoplecompletely lost, trying to have conversations and having no idea what the other person issaying. Zulu and Tswana are fairly common. Tsonga and Pedi are pretty fringe. The morecommon your tongue, the less likely you are to learn others. The more fringe, the more likelyyou are to pick up two or three. In the cities most people speak at least some English andusually a bit of Afrikaans, enough to get around. You’ll be at a party with a dozen people wherebits of conversation are flying by in two or three different languages. You’ll miss part of it,someone might translate on the fly to give you the gist, you pick up the rest from the context,and you just figure it out. The crazy thing is that, somehow, it works. Society functions. Exceptwhen it doesn’t.

 

A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD,OCCASIONALLY TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLYHUMILIATING EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OFTHE HEART, PART III: THE DANCEBy the end of high school I’d become a mogul. My tuck-shop business had evolvedinto a mini-empire that included selling pirated CDs I made at home. I’dconvinced my mother, as frugal as she was, that I needed a computer for school. Ididn’t. I wanted it so I could surf the Internet and play Leisure Suit Larry. But Iwas very convincing, and she broke down and got it for me. Thanks to thecomputer, the Internet, and the fortunate gift of a CD writer from a friend, I was inbusiness.I had carved out my niche, and was having a great time; life was so good as anoutsider that I didn’t even think about dating. The only girls in my life were thenaked ones on my computer. While I downloaded music and messed around inchat rooms, I’d dabble in porn sites here and there. No video, of course, onlypictures. With online porn today you just drop straight into the madness, but withdial-up it took so long for the images to load. It was almost gentlemanly comparedto now. You’d spend a good five minutes looking at her face, getting to know her asa person. Then a few minutes later you’d get some boobs. By the time you got toher vagina, you’d spent a lot of quality time together.In September of grade twelve, the matric dance was coming up. Senior prom.This was the big one. I was again faced with the dilemma of Valentine’s Day,confronting another strange ritual I did not understand. All I knew about promwas that, according to my American movies, prom is where it happens. You loseyour virginity. You go and you ride in the limousine, and then you and the girl dothe thing. That was literally my only reference. But I knew the rule: Cool guys getgirls, and funny guys get to hang out with the cool guys with their girls. So I’dassumed I wouldn’t be going, or if I did go it wouldn’t be with a date.I had two middlemen working for me in my CD business, Bongani and Tom.They sold the CDs that I copied in exchange for a cut. I met Tom at the arcade atthe Balfour Park mall. Like Teddy, he lived nearby because his mom was adomestic worker. Tom was in my grade but went to a government school,Northview, a proper ghetto school. Tom handled my CD sales over there.Tom was a chatterbox, hyperactive and go-go-go. He was a real hustler, too,always trying to cut a deal, work an angle. He could get people to do anything. A

great guy, but fucking crazy and a complete liar as well. I went with him once toHammanskraal, a settlement that was like a homeland, but not really.Hammanskraal, as its Afrikaans name suggests, was the kraal of Hamman, whatused to be a white man’s farm. The proper homelands, Venda and Gazankulu andTranskei, were places where black people actually lived, and the government drewa border around them and said, “Stay there.” Hammanskraal and settlements likeit were empty places on the map where deported black people had been relocated.That’s what the government did. They would find some patch of arid, dusty,useless land, and dig row after row of holes in the ground—a thousand latrines toserve four thousand families. Then they’d forcibly remove people from illegallyoccupying some white area and drop them off in the middle of nowhere with somepallets of plywood and corrugated iron. “Here. This is your new home. Build somehouses. Good luck.” We’d watch it on the news. It was like some heartless,survival-based reality TV show, only nobody won any money.One afternoon in Hammanskraal, Tom told me we were going to see a talentshow. At the time, I had a pair of Timberland boots I’d bought. They were the onlydecent piece of clothing I owned. Back then, almost no one in South Africa hadTimberlands. They were impossible to get, but everyone wanted them becauseAmerican rappers wore them. I’d scrimped and saved my tuck-shop money andmy CD money to buy them. As we were leaving, Tom told me, “Be sure to wearyour Timberlands.”The talent show was in this little community hall attached to nothing in themiddle of nowhere. When we got there, Tom was going around, shaking hands,chatting with everybody. There was singing, dancing, some poetry. Then the hostgot up onstage and said, “Re na le modiragatsi yo o kgethegileng. Ka kopoamogelang…Spliff Star!” “We’ve got a special performer, a rapper all the wayfrom America. Please welcome…Spliff Star!”Spliff Star was Busta Rhymes’s hype man at the time. I sat there, confused.What? Spliff Star? In Hammanskraal? Then everyone in the room turned andlooked at me. Tom walked over and whispered in my ear.“Dude, come up onstage.”“What?”“Come onstage.”“Dude, what are you talking about?”“Dude, please, you’re gonna get me in so much shit. They’ve already paid methe money.”“Money? What money?”Of course, what Tom had failed to tell me was that he’d told these people hewas bringing a famous rapper from America to come and rap in their talent show.He had demanded to be paid up front for doing so, and I, in my Timberlands, was

that famous American rapper.“Screw you,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”“Please, dude, I’m begging you. Please do me this favor. Please. There’s thisgirl here, and I wanna get with her, and I told her I know all these rappers…Please.I’m begging you.”“Dude, I’m not Spliff Star. What am I gonna do?!”“Just rap Busta Rhymes songs.”“But I don’t know any of the lyrics.”“It doesn’t matter. These people don’t speak English.”“Aw, fuck.”I got up onstage and Tom did some terrible beat-boxing—“Bff ba-dff, bff bffba-dff”—while I stumbled through some Busta Rhymes lyrics that I made up as Iwent along. The audience erupted with cheers and applause. An American rapperhad come to Hammanskraal, and it was the most epic thing they had ever seen.So that’s Tom.One afternoon Tom came by my house and we started talking about thedance. I told him I didn’t have a date, couldn’t get a date, and wasn’t going to get adate.“I can get you a girl to go with you to the dance,” he said.“No, you can’t.”“Yes, I can. Let’s make a deal.”“I don’t want one of your deals, Tom.”“No, listen, here’s the deal. If you give me a better cut on the CDs I’m selling,plus a bunch of free music for myself, I’ll come back with the most beautiful girlyou’ve ever seen in your life, and she’ll be your date for the dance.”“Okay, I’ll take that deal because it’s never going to happen.”“Do we have a deal?”“We have a deal, but it’s not going to happen.”“But do we have a deal?”“It’s a deal.”“Okay, I’m going to find you a date. She’s going to be the most beautiful girlyou’ve ever seen, and you’re going to take her to the matric dance and you’re goingto be a superstar.”The dance was still two months away. I promptly forgot about Tom and hisridiculous deal. Then he came over to my house one afternoon and popped his

head into my room.“I found the girl.”“Really?”“Yeah. You have to come and meet her.”I knew Tom was full of shit, but the thing that makes a con man successful isthat he never gives you nothing. He delivers just enough to keep you believing.Tom had introduced me to many beautiful women. He was never dating them, buthe talked a good game, and was always around them. So when he said he had agirl, I didn’t doubt him. The two of us jumped on a bus and headed into the city.The girl lived in a run-down block of flats downtown. We found her building,and a girl leaned over the balcony and waved us inside. That was the girl’s sisterLerato, Tom said. Come to find out, he’d been trying to get with Lerato, andsetting me up with the sister was his way in—of course, Tom was working anangle.It was dark in the lobby. The elevator was busted, so we walked up severalflights. This girl Lerato brought us into the flat. In the living room was this giant,but I mean really, really enormous, fat woman. I was like, Oh, Tom. I see whatyou’ve done here. Nicely played. Tom was a big joker as well.“Is this my date?” I asked.“No, no, no,” he said. “This is not your date. This is her older sister. Your dateis Babiki. Babiki has three older sisters, and Lerato is her younger sister. Babiki’sgone to the store to buy groceries. She’ll be back in a moment.”We waited, chatted with the older sister. Ten minutes later the door openedand the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life walked in. She was…goodLord. Beautiful eyes, beautiful golden yellow-brown skin. It was like she glowed.No girl at my high school looked anything like her.“Hi,” she said.“Hi,” I replied.I was dumbfounded. I had no idea how to talk to a girl that beautiful. She wasshy and didn’t speak much, either. There was a bit of an awkward pause. LuckilyTom’s a guy who just talks and talks. He jumped right in and smoothed everythingover. “Trevor, this is Babiki. Babiki, Trevor.” He went on and on about how great Iwas, how much she was looking forward to the dance, when I would pick her upfor the dance, all the details. We hung out for a few, and then Tom needed to getgoing so we headed out the door. Babiki turned and smiled at me and waved as weleft.“Bye.”“Bye.”

We walked out of that building and I was the happiest man on earth. Icouldn’t believe it. I was the guy at school who couldn’t get a date. I’d resignedmyself to never getting a date, didn’t consider myself worthy of having a date. Butnow I was going to the matric dance with the most beautiful girl in the world.Over the following weeks we went down to Hillbrow a few more times to hangout with Babiki and her sisters and her friends. Babiki’s family was Pedi, one ofSouth Africa’s smaller tribes. I liked getting to know people of differentbackgrounds, so that was fun. Babiki and her friends were what we callamabhujua. They’re as poor as most other black people, but they try to act likethey’re not. They dress fashionably and act rich. Amabhujua will put a shirt onlayaway, one shirt, and spend seven months paying it off. They’ll live in shackswearing Italian leather shoes that cost thousands. An interesting crowd.Babiki and I never went on a date alone. It was always the two of us in agroup. She was shy, and I was a nervous wreck most of the time, but we had fun.Tom kept everyone loose and having a good time. Whenever we’d say goodbye,Babiki would give me a hug, and once she even gave me a little kiss. I was inheaven. I was like, Yeah, I’ve got a girlfriend. Cool.—As the dance approached, I started getting nervous. I didn’t have a car. I didn’thave any decent clothes. This was my first time taking out a beautiful girl, and Iwanted it to be perfect.We’d moved to Highlands North when my stepfather’s garage went out ofbusiness, and he moved his workshop to the house. We had a big yard and agarage in the back, and that became his new workshop, essentially. At any giventime, we had at least ten or fifteen cars in the driveway, in the yard, and out on thestreet, clients’ cars being worked on and old junkers Abel kept around to tinkerwith. One afternoon Tom and I were at the house. Tom was telling Abel about mydate, and Abel decided to be generous. He said I could take a car for the dance.There was a red Mazda that we’d had for a while, a complete piece of shit butit worked well enough. I’d borrowed it before, but the car I really wanted wasAbel’s BMW. It was old and beat-up like the Mazda, but a shit BMW is still aBMW. I begged him to let me take it.“Please, please, can I use the BMW?”“Not a fucking chance.”“Please. This is the greatest moment in my life. Please. I’m begging you.”“No.”“Please.”“No. You can take the Mazda.”Tom, always the hustler and the dealmaker, stepped in.

“Bra Abie,” he said. “I don’t think you understand. If you saw the girl Trevoris taking to the dance, you would see why this is so important. Let’s make a deal. Ifwe bring her here and she’s the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen in your life,you’ll let him take the BMW.”Abel thought about it.“Okay. Deal.”We went to Babiki’s flat, told her my parents wanted to meet her, and broughther back to my house. Then we brought her around to the garage in the backwhere Abel and his guys were working. Tom and I went over and introduced them.“Abel, this is Babiki. Babiki, this is Abel.”Abel smiled big, was charming as always.“Nice to meet you,” he said.They chatted for a few minutes. Tom and Babiki left. Abel turned to me.“Is that the girl?”“Yes.”“You can take the BMW.”Once I had the car, I desperately needed something to wear. I was taking outthis girl who was really into fashion, and, except for my Timberlands, everything Iowned was shit. I was limited in my wardrobe choices because I was stuck buyingin the shops my mother let me go to, and my mother did not believe in spendingmoney on clothes. She’d take me to some bargain clothing store and tell me whatour budget was, and I’d have to find something to wear.At the time I had no clue about clothes. My idea of fashion was a brand ofclothing called Powerhouse. It was the kind of stuff weight lifters wear down inMiami or out at Venice Beach, baggy track pants with baggy sweatshirts. The logowas a cartoon of this giant bodybuilding bulldog wearing wraparound sunglassesand smoking a cigar and flexing his muscles. On the pants he was flexing all theway down your leg. On the shirt he was flexing across your chest. On theunderwear, he was flexing on your crotch. I thought Powerhouse was the baddestthing in the world, I can’t even front. I had no friends, I loved dogs, and muscleswere cool—that’s where I was working from. I had Powerhouse everything, the fullrange, five of the same outfit in five different colors. It was easy. The pants camewith the top, so I knew how to make it work.Bongani, the other middleman from my CD business, found out I had a date,and he made it his mission to give me a makeover. “You need to up your game,” hesaid. “You cannot go to the dance looking the way you look—for her sake, notyours. Let’s go shopping.”I went to my mom and begged her to give me money to buy something to

wear for the dance. She finally relented and gave me 2,000 rand, for one outfit. Itwas the most money she’d ever given me for anything in my life. I told Bonganihow much I had to spend, and he said we’d make it work. The trick to looking rich,he told me, is to have one expensive item, and for the rest of the things you getbasic, good-looking quality stuff. The nice item will draw everyone’s eye, and it’lllook like you’ve spent more than you have.In my mind nothing was cooler than the leather coats everybody wore in TheMatrix. The Matrix came out while I was in high school and it was my favoritemovie at the time. I loved Neo. In my heart I knew: I am Neo. He’s a nerd. He’suseless at everything, but secretly he’s a badass superhero. All I needed was a bald,mysterious black man to come into my life and show me the way. Now I hadBongani, black, head shaved, telling me, “You can do it. You’re the one.” And I waslike, “Yes. I knew it.”I told Bongani I wanted a leather coat like Keanu Reeves wore, the ankle-length black one. Bongani shut that down. “No, that’s not practical. It’s cool, butyou’ll never be able to wear it again.” He took me shopping and we bought a calf-length black leather jacket, which would look ridiculous today but at the time,thanks to Neo, was very cool. That alone cost 1,200 rand. Then we finished theoutfit with a pair of simple black pants, suede square-toed shoes, and a cream-white knitted sweater.Once we had the outfit, Bongani took a long look at my enormous Afro. I wasforever trying to get the perfect 1970s Michael Jackson Afro. What I had was moreBuckwheat: unruly and impossible to comb, like stabbing a pitchfork into a bed ofcrabgrass.“We need to fix that fucking hair,” Bongani said.“What do you mean?” I said. “This is just my hair.”“No, we have to do something.”Bongani lived in Alexandra. He dragged me there, and we went to talk tosome girls from his street who were hanging out on the corner.“What would you do with this guy’s hair?” he asked them.The girls looked me over.“He has so much,” one of them said. “Why doesn’t he cornrow it?”“Shit, yeah,” they said. “That’s great!”I said, “What? Cornrows? No!”“No, no,” they said. “Do it.”Bongani dragged me to a hair salon down the street. We went in and satdown. The woman touched my hair, shook her head, and turned to Bongani.“I can’t work with this sheep,” she said. “You have to do something about

this.”“What do we need to do?”“You have to relax it. I don’t do that here.”“Okay.”Bongani dragged me to a second salon. I sat down in the chair, and thewoman took my hair and started painting this creamy white stuff in it. She waswearing rubber gloves to keep this chemical relaxer off her own skin, which shouldhave been my first clue that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. Once my hair wasfull of the relaxer, she told me, “You have to try to keep it in for as long as possible.It’s going to start burning. When it starts burning, tell me and we’ll rinse it out.But the longer you can handle it, the straighter your hair will become.”I wanted to do it right, so I sat in the chair and waited and waited for as longas I could.I waited too long.She’d told me to tell her when it started burning. She should have told me totell her when it started tingling, because by the time it was actually burning it hadalready taken off several layers of my scalp. I was well past tingling when I startedto freak out. “It’s burning! It’s burning!” She rushed me over to the sink andstarted to rinse the relaxer out. What I didn’t know is that the chemical doesn’treally start to burn until it’s being rinsed out. I felt like someone was pouringliquid fire onto my head. When she was done I had patches of acid burns all overmy scalp.I was the only man in the salon; it was all women. It was a window into whatwomen experience to look good on a regular basis. Why would they ever do this?,I thought. This is horrible. But it worked. My hair was completely straight. Thewoman combed it back, and I looked like a pimp, a pimp named Slickback.Bongani then dragged me back to the first salon, and the woman agreed tocornrow my hair. She worked slowly. It took six hours. Finally she said, “Okay, youcan look in the mirror.” She turned me around in the chair and I looked in themirror and…I had never seen myself like that before. It was like the makeoverscenes in my American movies, where they take the dorky guy or girl, fix the hairand change the clothes, and the ugly duckling becomes the swan. I’d been soconvinced I’d never get a date that I never tried to look nice for a girl, so I didn’tknow that I could. The hair was good. My skin wasn’t perfect, but it was gettingbetter; the pustules had receded into regular pimples. I looked…not bad.I went home, and my mom squealed when I walked in the door.“Ooooooh! They turned my baby boy into a pretty little girl! I’ve got a littlegirl! You’re so pretty!”“Mom! C’mon. Stop it.”

“Is this the way you’re telling me that you’re gay?”“What? No. Why would you say that?”“You know it’s okay if you are.”“No, Mom. I’m not gay.”Everyone in my family loved it. They all thought it looked great. My mom didtease the shit out of me, though.“It’s very well done,” she said, “but it is way too pretty. You do look like a girl.”—The big night finally came. Tom came over to help me get ready. The hair, theclothes, everything came together perfectly. Once I was set, we went to Abel to getthe keys to the BMW, and that was the moment the whole night started to gowrong.It was a Saturday night, end of the week, which meant Abel was drinking withhis workers. I walked out to his garage, and as soon as I saw his eyes I knew: Hewas wasted. Fuck. When Abel was drunk he was a completely different person.“Ah, you look nice!” he said with a big smile, looking me over. “Where are yougoing?”“Where am I—Abie, I’m going to the dance.”“Okay. Have fun.”“Um…can I get the keys?”“The keys to what?”“To the car.”“What car?”“The BMW. You promised I could drive the BMW to the dance.”“First go buy me some beers,” he said.He gave me his car keys; Tom and I drove to the liquor store. I bought Abel afew cases of beer, drove back, and unloaded it for him.“Okay,” I said, “can I take the BMW now?”“No.”“What do you mean ‘no’?”“I mean ‘no.’ I need my car tonight.”“But you promised. You said I could take it.”“Yeah, but I need the car.”I was crushed. I sat there with Tom and begged him for close to half an hour.

“Please.”“No.”“Please.”“Nope.”Finally we realized it wasn’t going to happen. We took the shitty Mazda anddrove to Babiki’s house. I was an hour late picking her up. She was completelypissed off. Tom had to go in and convince her to come out, and eventually she did.She was even more gorgeous than before, in an amazing red dress, but shewas clearly not in a great mood. Inside I was quietly starting to panic, but I smiledand kept trying my gentlemanly best to be a good date, holding the door for her,telling her how beautiful she was. Tom and the sister gave us a send-off and weheaded out.Then I got lost. The dance was being held at some venue in a part of town Iwasn’t familiar with, and at some point I got completely turned around and had noidea where I was. I drove around for an hour in the dark, going left, going right,doubling back. I was on my cellphone the whole time, desperately calling people,trying to figure out where I was, trying to get directions. Babiki sat next to me instony silence the whole time, clearly not feeling me or this night at all. I wascrashing hard. I was late. I didn’t know where I was going. I was the worst dateshe’d ever had in her life.I finally figured out where I was and we made it to the dance, nearly twohours late. I parked, jumped out, and ran around to get her door. When I openedit, she just sat there.“Are you ready?” I said. “Let’s go in.”“No.”“No? What…what do you mean, ‘no’?”“No.”“Okay…but why?”“No.”“But we need to go inside. The dance is inside.”“No.”I stood there for another twenty minutes, trying to convince her to comeinside, but she kept saying “no.” She wouldn’t get out of the car.Finally, I said, “Okay, I’ll be right back.”I ran inside and found Bongani.“Where have you been?” he said.

“I’m here! But my date’s in the car and she won’t come in.”“What do you mean she won’t come in?”“I don’t know what’s going on. Please help me.”We went back out to the parking lot. I took Bongani over to the car, and thesecond he saw her he lost it. “Jesus in Heaven! This is the most beautiful womanI’ve ever seen. You said she was beautiful, Trevor, but this is insane.” In an instanthe completely forgot about helping me with Babiki. He turned and ran back insideand called to the guys. “Guys! You gotta come see this! Trevor got a date! Andshe’s beautiful! Guys! Come out here!”Twenty guys came running out into the parking lot. They clustered around thecar. “Yo, she’s so hot!” “Dude, this girl came with Trevor?” Guys were gawking ather like she was an animal at the zoo. They were asking to take pictures with her.They were calling back to more people inside. “This is insane! Look at Trevor’sdate! No, no, no, you gotta come and see!”I was mortified. I’d spent four years of high school carefully avoiding any kindof romantic humiliation whatsoever, and now, on the night of the matric dance,the night of all nights, my humiliation had turned into a circus bigger than theevent itself: Trevor the undatable clown thought he was going to have the mostbeautiful girl at the dance, but he’s crashing and burning so let’s all go outside andwatch.Babiki sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, refusing to budge. Iwas outside the car, pacing, stressed out. A friend of mine had a bottle of brandythat he’d smuggled into the dance. “Here,” he said, “have some of this.” Nothingmattered at that point, so I started drinking. I’d fucked up. The girl didn’t like me.The night was done.Most of the guys eventually wandered back inside. I was sitting on thepavement, taking swigs from the brandy bottle, getting buzzed. At some pointBongani went back over to the car to try one last time to convince Babiki to comein. After a minute his head popped up over the car with this confused look.“Yo, Trevor,” he said, “your date does not speak English.”“What?”“Your date. She does not speak any English.”“That’s not possible.”I got up and walked over to the car. I asked her a question in English and shegave me a blank stare.Bongani looked at me.“How did you not know that your date does not speak English?”“I…I don’t know.”

“Have you never spoken to her?”“Of course I have—or, wait…have I?”I started flashing back through all the times I’d been with Babiki, meeting ather flat, hanging out with her friends, introducing her to Abel. Did I talk to herthen? No. Did I talk to her then? No. It was like the scene in Fight Club where EdNorton’s character flashes back and realizes he and Brad Pitt have never been inthe same room with Helena Bonham Carter at the same time. He realizes he’sbeen punching himself the whole time. He’s Tyler Durden. In all the excitement ofmeeting Babiki, the times we were hanging out and getting to know each other, wewere never actually speaking to each other. It was always through Tom.Fucking Tom.Tom had promised he’d get me a beautiful date for the dance, but he hadn’tmade any promises about any of her other qualities. Whenever we were together,she was speaking Pedi to Tom, and Tom was speaking English to me. But shedidn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Pedi. Abel spoke Pedi. He’d learnedseveral South African languages in order to deal with his customers, so he’dspoken with her fluently when they met. But in that moment I realized I’d neveractually heard her say anything in English other than: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.”That’s it: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.”Babiki was so shy that she didn’t talk much to begin with, and I was so ineptwith women that I didn’t know how to talk to her. I’d never had a girlfriend; Ididn’t even know what “girlfriend” meant. Someone put a beautiful woman on myarm and said, “She’s your girlfriend.” I’d been mesmerized by her beauty and justthe idea of her—I didn’t know I was supposed to talk to her. The naked women onmy computer, I’d never had to talk to them, ask them their opinions, ask themabout their feelings. And I was afraid I’d open my mouth and ruin the whole thing,so I just nodded and smiled along and let Tom do the talking.All three of Babiki’s older sisters spoke English, and her younger sister Leratospoke a little. So whenever we hung out with Babiki and her sisters and theirfriends, a lot of the conversation was in English. The rest of it was going right byme in Pedi or in Sotho, but that’s completely normal in South Africa so it neverbothered me; I got enough of the gist of the conversation from everyone’s Englishto know what was going on. And the way my mind works with language, evenwhen I’m hearing other languages, they get filtered into English as I’m hearingthem. My mind stores them in English. When my grandmother and great-grandmother were hysterically praying to God to destroy the demon that had shiton their kitchen floor, all of that transpired in Xhosa, but it’s stored in English. Iremember it as English. So whenever I lay in bed at night dreaming about Babikiand the moments we’d spent together, I felt like it had transpired in Englishbecause that’s how I remembered it. And Tom had never said anything about whatlanguage she spoke or didn’t speak, because why would he care? He just wanted toget his free CDs and get with the sister. Which is how I’d been dating a girl for over

a month—the girl I very much believed was my first girlfriend—without everhaving had a single conversation with her.Now the whole night came rushing back and I saw it from her point of view,and it was perfectly obvious to me why she didn’t want to get out of the car. Sheprobably hadn’t wanted to go to the dance with me in the first place; she probablyowed Tom a favor, and Tom can talk anyone into anything. Then I’d left her sittingand waiting for me for an hour and she was pissed off. Then she got into the carand it was the first time we had ever been alone, and she realized I couldn’t evenhold a conversation with her. I’d driven her around and gotten lost in the dark—ayoung girl alone in a car in the middle of nowhere with some strange guy, no ideawhere I was taking her. She was probably terrified. Then we got to the dance andshe didn’t speak anyone’s language. She didn’t know anyone. She didn’t evenknow me.Bongani and I stood outside the car, staring at each other. I didn’t know whatto do. I tried talking to her in every language I knew. Nothing worked. She onlyspoke Pedi. I got so desperate that I started trying to talk to her using handsignals.“Please. You. Me. Inside. Dance. Yes?”“No.”“Inside. Dance. Please?”“No.”I asked Bongani if he spoke Pedi. He didn’t. I ran inside to the dance and ranaround looking for someone who spoke Pedi to help me to convince her to comein. “Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi?” Nobody spokePedi.So I never got to go to my matric dance. Other than the three minutes I spentrunning through it looking for someone who spoke Pedi, I spent the whole night inthe parking lot. When the dance ended, I climbed back into the shitty red Mazdaand drove Babiki home. We sat in total awkward silence the whole way.I pulled up in front of her block of flats in Hillbrow, stopped the car, and satfor a moment as I tried to figure out the polite and gentlemanly way to end theevening. Then, out of nowhere, she leaned over and gave me a kiss. Like, a realkiss, a proper kiss. The kind of kiss that made me forget that the whole disasterhad just happened. I was so confused. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.She pulled back and I looked deep into her eyes and thought, I have no idea howgirls work.I got out of the car, walked around to her side, and opened her door. Shegathered up her dress and stepped out and headed toward her flat, and as sheturned to go I gave her one last little wave.“Bye.”

“Bye.”

 

In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just thefacts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it—what it means. As a result, Germansgrow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way,to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimerhanging over the whole thing. “Well, that was shameful, now wasn’t it?”In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren’ttaught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it’s taught in America. In America,the history of racism is taught like this: “There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow andthen there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.” It was the same for us. “Apartheidwas bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let’s move on.” Facts, but not many, and never theemotional or moral dimension. It was as if the teachers, many of whom were white, had beengiven a mandate. “Whatever you do, don’t make the kids angry.”

GO HITLER!When I was in grade nine, three Chinese kids transferred to Sandringham: Bolo,Bruce Lee, and John. They were the only Chinese kids in the school, out of athousand pupils. Bolo got his nickname because he looked like Bolo Yeung fromthe Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport. Bruce Lee’s name really wasBruce Lee, which made our lives. Here was this Chinese guy, quiet, good-looking,in great shape, and his name was Bruce Lee. We were like, This is magic. Thankyou, Jesus, for bringing us Bruce Lee. John was just John, which was weirdbecause of the other two.I got to know Bolo because he was one of my tuck-shop clients. Bolo’s parentswere professional pirates. They pirated videogames and sold them at flea markets.As the son of pirates, Bolo did the same thing—he started selling bootlegPlayStation games around school. Kids would give him their PlayStation, and he’dbring it back a few days later with a chip in it that enabled them to play piratedgames, which he would then sell them. Bolo was friends with this white kid andfellow pirate named Andrew, who traded in bootleg CDs. Andrew was two gradesabove me and a real computer geek; he even had a CD writer at home, back whennobody had CD writers.One day on my tuck-shop rounds, I overheard Andrew and Bolo complainingabout the black kids at school. They’d realized that they could take Andrew’s andBolo’s merchandise, say “I’ll pay you later,” and then not pay, because Andrew andBolo were too scared of black people to go back to ask for the money. I leaned in totheir conversation and said, “Listen, you shouldn’t get upset. Black people don’thave any money, so trying to get more stuff for less money is just what we do. Butlet me help. I’ll be your middleman. You give me the merchandise and I’ll sell it,and then I’ll handle getting the money. In return, you give me a cut of the sale.”They liked the idea right away, and we became partners.As the tuck-shop guy, I was perfectly positioned. I had my network set up. AllI had to do was tap into it. With the money I made selling CDs and videogames, Iwas able to save up and add new components and more memory to my owncomputer. Andrew the computer geek showed me how to do it, where to buy thecheapest parts, how to assemble them, how to repair them. He showed me how hisbusiness worked, too, how to download music, where to get rewritable CDs inbulk. The only thing I was missing was my own CD writer, because it was the most

expensive component. At the time a CD writer cost as much as the rest of thecomputer, nearly 2,000 rand.I worked as a middleman for Bolo and Andrew for a year. Then Bolo leftschool; the rumor was that his parents got arrested. From that point on I workedfor Andrew, and then as he was about to matriculate he decided to quit the game.“Trevor,” he told me, “you’ve been a loyal partner.” And, as thanks, he bequeathedunto me his CD writer. At the time, black people barely had access to computers,let’s start there. But a CD writer? That was the stuff of lore. It was mythical. Theday Andrew gave it to me, he changed my life. Thanks to him, I now controlledproduction, sales, distribution—I had everything I needed to lock down thebootleg business.I was a natural capitalist. I loved selling stuff, and I was selling somethingthat everybody wanted and nobody else could provide. I sold my discs for 30 rand,around $3. A regular CD in the store cost 100 to 150 rand. Once people startedbuying from me, they wouldn’t buy real CDs ever again—the deal was too good.I had an instinct for business, but at the time I knew nothing about music,which was odd for someone running a music-pirating business. The only music Iknew, still, was Christian music from church, the only music allowed in mymother’s house. The CD writer Andrew gave me was a 1x CD writer, which meantit copied at the speed it played. Every day I’d leave school, go to my room, and sitfor five to six hours, copying CDs. I had my own surround-sound system built withold car speakers I’d salvaged from the junkers Abel kept in the yard, and I strungthem up around the room. Even though I had to sit there while each CD played,for a long time I didn’t really listen to them. I knew it was against the dealer’scode: Never get high on your own supply.Thanks to the Internet, I could get anyone anything. I never judged anyone’staste in music. You wanted the new Nirvana, I got you the new Nirvana. Youwanted the new DMX, I got you the new DMX. Local South African music was big,but black American music was what people were desperate for, hip-hop and R&B.Jagged Edge was huge. 112 was huge. I sold a lot of Montell Jordan. So muchMontell Jordan.When I started, I had a dial-up connection and a 24k modem. It would take aday to download an album. But technology kept evolving, and I kept reinvesting inthe business. I upgraded to a 56k modem. I got faster CD writers, multiple CDwriters. I started downloading more, copying more, selling more. That’s when Igot two middlemen of my own, my friend Tom, who went to Northview, and myfriend Bongani, who lived in Alex.One day Bongani came to me and said, “You know what would make a lot ofmoney? Instead of copying whole albums, why don’t you put the best tracks ofdifferent albums onto one CD, because people only wanna hear the songs theylike.” That sounded like a great idea, so I started making mix CDs. Those sold well.Then a few weeks later Bongani came back and said, “Can you make the tracks

fade into one another so the music moves from track one to track two without abreak and the beat carries on? It’ll be like a DJ playing a complete set the wholenight.” That sounded like a great idea, too. I downloaded a program called BPM,“beats per minute.” It had a graphical interface that looked like two vinyl recordsside by side, and I could mix and fade between songs, basically everything a DJcan do live. I started making party CDs, and those started selling like hotcakes,too.—Business was booming. By matric I was balling, making 500 rand a week. To putthat in perspective, there are maids in South Africa who still earn less than thattoday. It’s a shit salary if you’re trying to support a family, but as a sixteen-year-old living at home with no real expenses, I was living the dream.For the first time in my life I had money, and it was the most liberating thingin the world. The first thing I learned about having money was that it gives youchoices. People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richeryou are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money.With money, I experienced freedom on a whole new level: I went toMcDonald’s. People in America don’t understand, but when an American chainopens in a third-world country, people go crazy. That’s true to this day. A BurgerKing opened for the first time in South Africa last year, and there was a queuearound the block. It was an event. Everyone was going around saying, “I have toeat at Burger King. Have you heard? It’s from America.” The funny thing was thatthe queue was actually just white people. White people went bat-shit crazy forBurger King. Black people were like, whatever. Black people didn’t need BurgerKing. Our hearts were with KFC and McDonald’s. The crazy thing aboutMcDonald’s is that we knew about it long before it came, probably from movies.We never even dreamed we would ever get one in South Africa; McDonald’sseemed to us like one of those American things that is exclusively American andcan’t go anywhere else. Even before we ever tasted McDonald’s, we knew we’d loveit, and we did. At one point South Africa was opening more McDonald’s than anyother country in the world. With Mandela came freedom—and with freedom cameMcDonald’s. A McDonald’s had opened up just two blocks from our house notlong after we moved to Highlands North, but my mom would never pay for us toeat there. With my own money I was like, Let’s do this. I went all in. They didn’thave “supersize” at the time; “large” was the biggest. So I walked up to thecounter, feeling very impressed with myself, and I put down my money and said,“I’ll have a large number one.”I fell in love with McDonald’s. McDonald’s, to me, tasted like America.McDonald’s is America. You see it advertised and it looks amazing. You crave it.You buy it. You take your first bite, and it blows your mind. It’s even better thanyou imagined. Then, halfway through, you realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.A few bites later you’re like, Hmm, there’s a lot wrong with this. Then you’re

done, you miss it like crazy, and you go back for more.Once I’d had a taste of America, I never ate at home. I only ate McDonald’s.McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s. Every night my mother wouldtry to cook me dinner.“Tonight we’re having chicken livers.”“No, I’m gonna have McDonald’s.”“Tonight we’re having dog bones.”“I think I’m gonna go with McDonald’s again.”“Tonight we’re having chicken feet.”“Hmmmmm…Okay, I’m in. But tomorrow I’m eating McDonald’s.”The money kept rolling in and I was balling out of control. This is how ballingI was: I bought a cordless telephone. This was before everyone had a cellphone.The range on this cordless phone was strong enough that I could put the baseoutside my window, walk the two blocks to McDonald’s, order my large numberone, walk back home, go up to my room, and fire up my computer, carrying on aconversation the whole time. I was that dude walking down the street holding agiant phone to my ear with the aerial fully extended, talking to my friend. “Yeah,I’m just goin’ down to McDonald’s…”Life was good, and none of it would have happened without Andrew. Withouthim, I would never have mastered the world of music piracy and lived a life ofendless McDonald’s. What he did, on a small scale, showed me how important it isto empower the dispossessed and the disenfranchised in the wake of oppression.Andrew was white. His family had access to education, resources, computers. Forgenerations, while his people were preparing to go to university, my people werecrowded into thatched huts singing, “Two times two is four. Three times two issix. La la la la la.” My family had been denied the things his family had taken forgranted. I had a natural talent for selling to people, but without knowledge andresources, where was that going to get me? People always lecture the poor: “Takeresponsibility for yourself! Make something of yourself!” But with what rawmaterials are the poor to make something of themselves?People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man tofish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice ifyou gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing. Workingwith Andrew was the first time in my life I realized you need someone from theprivileged world to come to you and say, “Okay, here’s what you need, and here’show it works.” Talent alone would have gotten me nowhere without Andrew givingme the CD writer. People say, “Oh, that’s a handout.” No. I still have to work toprofit by it. But I don’t stand a chance without it.—

One afternoon I was in my room making a CD when Bongani came over to pick uphis inventory. He saw me mixing songs on my computer.“This is insane,” he said. “Are you doing this live?”“Yeah.”“Trevor, I don’t think you understand; you’re sitting on a gold mine. We needto do this for a crowd. You need to come to the township and start DJ’ing gigs. Noone has ever seen a DJ playing on a computer before.”Bongani lived in Alexandra. Where Soweto is a sprawling, government-planned ghetto, Alexandra is a tiny, dense pocket of a shantytown, left over fromthe pre-apartheid days. Rows and rows of cinder-block and corrugated-ironshacks, practically stacked on top of one another. Its nickname is Gomorrahbecause it has the wildest parties and the worst crimes.Street parties are the best thing about Alexandra. You get a tent, put it up inthe middle of the road, take over the street, and you’ve got a party. There’s noformal invitations or guest list. You just tell a few people, word of mouth travels,and a crowd appears. There are no permits, nothing like that. If you own a tent,you have the right to throw a party in your street. Cars creep up to the intersectionand the driver will see the party blocking their way and shrug and make a U-turn.Nobody gets upset. The only rule is that if you throw a party in front ofsomebody’s house, they get to come and share your alcohol. The parties don’t enduntil someone gets shot or a bottle gets broken on someone’s face. That’s how ithas to end; otherwise, it wasn’t a party.Back then, most DJs could spin for only a few hours; they were limited by thenumber of vinyls they could buy. Since parties went all night, you might need fiveor six DJs to keep the dancing going. But I had a massive hard drive stuffed withMP3s, which is why Bongani was excited when he saw me mixing—he saw a way tocorner the market.“How much music do you have?” he asked.“Winamp says I can play for a week.”“We’ll make a fortune.”Our first gig was a New Year’s Eve party the summer we graduated fromSandringham. Bongani and I took my tower, my giant monitor, and all the cablesand the keyboard and the mouse. We loaded everything up in a minibus andbrought it over to Alex. We took over the street in front of his house, ran theelectricity out of his place, set up the computer, set up speakers, and borrowed atent, and people came. It was explosive. By midnight the whole street was packedfrom one end to the other. Ours was the biggest New Year’s Eve party in Alexandrathat year, and to have the biggest party in Alexandra is no joke. All night, from farand wide, people kept coming. The word spread: “There’s a light-skinned guy whoplays music on a computer. You’ve never seen anything like it.” I DJ’d by myself

until dawn. By then me and my friends were so drunk and exhausted that wepassed out on the lawn outside Bongani’s house. The party was so big it made ourreputation in the hood, instantly. Pretty soon we were getting booked all over.Which was a good thing.When Bongani and I graduated from high school, we couldn’t get jobs. Therewere no jobs for us to get. The only ways I had to make money were pirating CDsand DJ’ing parties, and now that I’d left Sandringham, the minibus drivers andcorner kids in Alexandra were the single biggest market for my CDs. It was alsowhere I was playing the most gigs, so to keep earning I naturally gravitated thatway. Most of the white kids I knew were taking a gap year. “I’m going to take a gapyear and go to Europe.” That’s what the white kids were saying. So I said, “I, too,am going to take a gap year. I am going to take a year and go to the township andhang out on the corner.” And that’s what I did.There was a low brick wall running down the middle of the road in front ofBongani’s house in Alex, and every day Bongani and I and our crew would go siton the wall. I’d bring my CDs. We’d play music and practice dance moves. Wehustled CDs all day and DJ’d parties at night. We started getting booked for gigs inother townships, other hoods.Thanks to my computer and modem I was getting exclusive tracks few peoplehad access to, but that created a problem for me. Sometimes I’d play the newmusic at parties and people would stand around going, “What is this? How do youdance to it?” For example, if a DJ plays a song like “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)”—yes, it’s a catchy song, but what is a whip? What is a nae nae? For that song to bepopular you have to know how to do the whip and the nae nae; new music worksat parties only if people know how to dance to it. Bongani decided we needed adance crew to show people the steps to the songs we were playing. Because wespent our days doing nothing but listening to CDs and coming up with dancemoves, our crew from the corner already knew all the songs, so they became ourdancers. And hands down the best, most beautiful, most graceful dancer in thecrew was Bongani’s neighbor, Hitler.Hitler was a great friend of mine, and good Lord could that guy dance. He wasmesmerizing to watch. He had a looseness and a fluidity that defied physics—imagine a jellyfish if it could walk on land. Incredibly handsome, too, tall and litheand muscular, with beautiful, smooth skin, big teeth, and a great smile, alwayslaughing. And all he did was dance. He’d be up in the morning, blasting housemusic or hip-hop, practicing moves the whole day.In the hood, everybody knows who the best dancer in the crew is. He’s likeyour status symbol. When you’re poor you don’t have cars or nice clothes, but thebest dancer gets girls, so that’s the guy you want to roll with. Hitler was our guy.There were parties with dance competitions. Kids from every neighborhood wouldcome and bring their best dancers. We’d always bring Hitler, and he almost alwayswon.

When Bongani and I put together a routine for our dance crew, there was noquestion who was going to be the star attraction. We built the whole set aroundHitler. I’d warm the crowd up with a few songs, then the dancers would come outand do a couple of numbers. Once they’d gotten the party started, they’d fan out toform a semicircle around the stage with a gap in the back for Hitler to enter. I’dcrank up Redman’s “Let’s Get Dirty” and start whipping the crowd up even more.“Are you ready?! I can’t hear you! Let me hear you make some noise!” Peoplewould start screaming, and Hitler would jump into the middle of the semicircleand the crowd would lose it. Hitler would do his thing while the guys circledaround him, shouting him on. “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”And because this was hip-hop, the crew would do that thing where you shoot yourarm out in front of you with your palm flat, bopping it up and down to the beat.“Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!” We’d have the whole crowd in afrenzy, a thousand people in the street chanting along with their hands in the air.“Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”—Hitler, although an unusual name, is not unheard-of in South Africa. Part of it hasto do with the way a lot of black people pick names. Black people choose theirtraditional names with great care; those are the names that have deeply personalmeanings. But from colonial times through the days of apartheid, black people inSouth Africa were required to have an English or European name as well—a namethat white people could pronounce, basically. So you had your English name, yourtraditional name, and your last name: Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. Nine times outof ten, your European name was chosen at random, plucked from the Bible ortaken from a Hollywood celebrity or a famous politician in the news. I know guysnamed after Mussolini and Napoleon. And, of course, Hitler.Westerners are shocked and confused by that, but really it’s a case of the Westreaping what it has sown. The colonial powers carved up Africa, put the black manto work, and did not properly educate him. White people don’t talk to blackpeople. So why would black people know what’s going on in the white man’sworld? Because of that, many black people in South Africa don’t really know whoHitler was. My own grandfather thought “a hitler” was a kind of army tank thatwas helping the Germans win the war. Because that’s what he took from what heheard on the news. For many black South Africans, the story of the war was thatthere was someone called Hitler and he was the reason the Allies were losing thewar. This Hitler was so powerful that at some point black people had to go helpwhite people fight against him—and if the white man has to stoop to ask the blackman for help fighting someone, that someone must be the toughest guy of all time.So if you want your dog to be tough, you name your dog Hitler. If you want yourkid to be tough, you name your kid Hitler. There’s a good chance you’ve got anuncle named Hitler. It’s just a thing.At Sandringham, we were taught more about World War II than the typical

black kids in the townships were, but only in a basic way. We weren’t taught tothink critically about Hitler and anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. We weren’ttaught, for instance, that the architects of apartheid were big fans of Hitler, thatthe racist policies they put in place were inspired, in part, by the racist policies ofthe Third Reich. We weren’t taught how to think about how Hitler related to theworld we lived in. We weren’t being taught to think, period. All we were taughtwas that in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and in 1941 he invaded the Soviet Unionand in 1943 he did something else. They’re just facts. Memorize them, write themdown for the test, and forget them.There is also this to consider: The name Hitler does not offend a black SouthAfrican because Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine.Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially truein the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person,Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back intime and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. IfNative Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably beChristopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson.I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worstatrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I oftenwonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? Thething Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Naziskept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comesdown to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million peoplekilled. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you readthrough the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, onlyguesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess. When Portugal and Belgium wereplundering Angola and the Congo, they weren’t counting the black people theyslaughtered. How many black people died harvesting rubber in the Congo? In thegold and diamond mines of the Transvaal?So in Europe and America, yes, Hitler is the Greatest Madman in History. InAfrica he’s just another strongman from the history books. In all my time hangingout with Hitler, I never once asked myself, “Why is his name Hitler?” His namewas Hitler because his mom named him Hitler.—Once Bongani and I added the dancers to our DJ sets, we blew up. We called ourgroup the Black and White Boys. The dancers were called the Springbok Boys. Westarted getting booked everywhere. Successful black families were moving to thesuburbs, but their kids still wanted to have block parties and stay connected to theculture of the townships, so they’d book us to play their parties. Word of mouthtraveled. Pretty soon we were getting booked more and more in the suburbs,meeting white people, playing for white people.One kid we knew from the township, his mother was involved in creating

cultural programs for schools. In America they’d be called “diversity programs.”They were springing up all over South Africa because we were supposed to belearning about and embracing one another in this post-apartheid era. This kid’smom asked us if we wanted to play at a cultural day at some school in Linksfield,the wealthy suburb south of Sandringham where my pal Teddy had lived. Therewas going to be all sorts of different dancing and music, and everyone was going tocome together and hang out and be cultural. She offered to pay, so we said sure.She sent us the information with the time and place and the name of the school:the King David School. A Jewish school.The day of the event, we booked a minibus, loaded it up with our gear, anddrove over. Once we arrived we waited in the back of the school’s assembly halland watched the acts that went onstage before us, different groups took their turnsperforming, flamenco dancers, Greek dancers, traditional Zulu musicians. Thenwe were up. We were billed as the Hip Hop Pantsula Dancers—the South AfricanB-Boys. We set up our sound system onstage. I looked out, and the whole hall wasnothing but Jewish kids in their yarmulkes, ready to party.I got on the mic. “Are you ready to rock out?!”“Yeahhhhhh!”“Make some noise!”“Yeahhhhhh!”I started playing. The bass was bumping, my crew was dancing, and everyonewas having a great time. The teachers, the chaperones, the parents, hundreds ofkids—they were all dancing like crazy. Our set was scheduled for fifteen minutes,and at the ten-minute mark came the moment for me to play “Let’s Get Dirty,”bring out my star dancer, and shut shit down.I started the song, the dancers fanned out in their semicircle, and I got on themic.“Are you guys ready?!”“Yeahhhhhh!”“You guys are not ready! Are you ready?!”“Yeeeaaahhhhhhhh!”“All right! Give it up and make some noise for HIIIIIITTTTLLLLEERRRRR​-RRRRR​!!!”Hitler jumped out to the middle of the circle and started killing it. The guysaround him were all chanting, “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”They had their arms out in front of them, bouncing to the rhythm. “Go Hit-ler! GoHit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!” And I was right there on the mic leading themalong. “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”

The whole room stopped. No one was dancing. The teachers, the chaperones,the parents, the hundreds of Jewish kids in their yarmulkes—they froze and staredaghast at us up on the stage. I was oblivious. So was Hitler. We kept going. For agood thirty seconds the only sound in the room was the beat of the music and meon the mic yelling, “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Put your hands in the airfor Hitler, yo!”A teacher ran up behind me and yanked the plug for my system out of thewall. The hall went dead silent, and she turned on me and she was livid. “Howdare you?! This is disgusting! You horrible, disgusting vile creature! How dareyou?!”My mind was racing, trying to figure out what she was talking about. Then itclicked. Hitler had a special dance move called o spana va. It means “where youwork” and it was very sexual: His hips would gyrate and thrust, like he was fuckingthe air. That was the move he was doing at the moment the teacher ran out, soclearly the dance was the thing she found so disgusting. But this was a move thatAfrican people do all the time. It’s a part of our culture. Here we were sharing ourculture for a cultural day, and this woman was calling us disgusting. She wasoffended, and I was offended by her taking offense.“Lady,” I said, “I think you need to calm down.”“I will not calm down! How dare you come here and insult us?!”“This is not insulting anyone. This is who we are!”“Get out of here! You people are disgusting.”And there it was. You people. Now I saw what the deal was: This lady wasracist. She couldn’t see black men dancing suggestively and not get pissed off. As Istarted packing up my gear, we kept arguing.“Listen, lady. We’re free now. We’re gonna do what we’re gonna do. You can’tstop us.”“I’ll have you know that my people stopped people like you before, and we canstop you again.”She was talking, of course, about stopping the Nazis in World War II, butthat’s not what I was hearing. Jews in South Africa are just white people. All I washearing was some white lady shouting about how white people beat us before andthey’ll beat us again. I said, “You will never stop us again, lady”—and here’s whereI played the trump card—“You’ll never stop us, because now we have NelsonMandela on our side! And he told us we can do this!”“What?!”She was so confused. I’d had it. I started cussing her out. “Fuck you, lady.Fuck your program. Fuck your school. Fuck your whole people. Let’s go, guys!We’re out!”

We didn’t walk out of that school. We danced out. We danced down the streetpumping our fists in the air. “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!”Because Hitler had shut shit down. Hitler had the most gangster dance movesever, and those white people didn’t know what hit them.

Alexandra was a farm originally named for the wife of the white man who owned it. LikeSophiatown and other black spots populating white areas before apartheid, Alex started out asa squatter settlement where blacks gathered and lived when coming to Johannesburg to findwork. What was unique about Alex is that this farmer sold plots of land to some of the blacktenants in the time before it was illegal for blacks to own property. So while Sophiatown andother black ghettos were razed and rebuilt as white suburbs, Alex fought and held on andasserted its right to exist. Wealthy white suburbs like Sandton grew around it, but Alexremained. More squatters came and more squatters came, putting up makeshift shacks andshanties. They look like the slums in Mumbai or the favelas in Brazil. The first time I saw thefavelas in Rio I said, “Yeah, that’s Alexandra, but on a hill.”Soweto was beautiful because, after democracy, you watched Soweto grow. Soweto hasbecome a proper city unto itself. People went from three-room houses to five-room houses tothree-bedroom houses with garages. There was room to grow because the piece of land fromthe government gave you something to build on. Alexandra can’t do that. Alex can’t get anybigger, because it’s pinned in on all sides, and it can’t build up, because it’s mostly shacks.When democracy came, people flooded into Alex from the homelands, building newshacks in the backyards of other shacks with still more shacks attached to the backside ofthose shacks, growing more dense and more compressed, leaving close to 200,000 peopleliving in a few square kilometers. Even if you go back today, Alex hasn’t changed. It can’tchange. It’s physically impossible for it to change. It can only be what it is.

THE CHEESE BOYSMy friend Bongani was a short, bald, super-buff guy. He wasn’t always that way.His whole life he’d been skinny, and then a bodybuilding magazine found its wayinto his hands and changed his life. Bongani was one of those people who broughtout the best in everybody. He was that friend who believed in you and saw thepotential in you that nobody else did, which was why so many of the township kidsgravitated toward him, and why I gravitated toward him as well. Bongani wasalways popular, but his reputation really took off when he beat up one of the moreinfamous bullies in the school. That cemented his status as sort of the leader andprotector of the township kids.Bongani lived in Alex, but I never visited him there while we were still inschool; he’d always come to my house in Highlands North. I’d been to Alex a fewtimes, for brief visits, but I’d never spent any real time there. I’d never been thereat night, let’s put it that way. Going to Alex during the day is different from goingthere at night. The place was nicknamed Gomorrah for a reason.One day after school, not long before we matriculated, Bongani walked up tome on the quad.“Hey, let’s go to the hood,” he said.“The hood?”At first I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew the word “hood” fromrap songs, and I knew the different townships where black people lived, but I hadnever used the one to describe the other.The walls of apartheid were coming down just as American hip-hop wasblowing up, and hip-hop made it cool to be from the hood. Before, living in atownship was something to be ashamed of; it was the bottom of the bottom. Thenwe had movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and they made thehood look cool. The characters in those movies, in the songs, they owned it. Kidsin the townships started doing the same, wearing their identity as a badge ofhonor: You were no longer from the township—you were from the hood. Beingfrom Alex gave you way more street cred than living in Highlands North. So whenBongani said, “Let’s go to the hood,” I was curious about what he meant. I wantedto find out more.

—When Bongani took me to Alex we entered as most people do, from the Sandtonside. You ride through one of the richest neighborhoods in Johannesburg, pastpalatial mansions and huge money. Then you go through the industrial belt ofWynberg that cordons off the rich and white from the poor and black. At theentrance to Alex there’s the huge minibus rank and the bus station. It’s the samebustling, chaotic third-world marketplace you see in James Bond and JasonBourne movies. It’s Grand Central Station but outdoors. Everything’s dynamic.Everything’s in motion. Nothing feels like it was there yesterday, and nothing feelslike it will be there tomorrow, but every day it looks exactly the same.Right next to the minibus rank, of course, is a KFC. That’s one thing aboutSouth Africa: There’s always a KFC. KFC found the black people. KFC did not playgames. They were in the hood before McDonald’s, before Burger King, beforeanyone. KFC was like, “Yo, we’re here for you.”Once you go past the minibus rank, you’re in Alex proper. I’ve been in fewplaces where there’s an electricity like there is in Alex. It’s a hive of constanthuman activity, all day long, people coming and going, gangsters hustling, guys onthe corner doing nothing, kids running around. There’s nowhere for all thatenergy to go, no mechanism for it to dissipate, so it erupts periodically in epic actsof violence and crazy parties. One minute it’ll be a placid afternoon, peoplehanging out, doing their thing, and next thing you know there’s a cop car chasinggangsters, flying through the streets, a gun battle going off, helicopters circlingoverhead. Then, ten minutes later, it’s like it never happened—everyone’s back tohanging out, back to the hustle, coming and going, running around.Alex is laid out on a grid, a series of avenues. The streets are paved, but thesidewalks are mostly dirt. The color scheme is cinder block and corrugated iron,gray and dark gray, punctuated by bright splashes of color. Someone’s painted awall lime green, or there’s a bright-red sign above a takeaway shop, or maybesomebody’s picked up a bright-blue piece of sheet metal just by luck. There’s littlein the way of basic sanitation. Trash is everywhere, typically a garbage fire goingdown some side street. There’s always something burning in the hood.As you walk, there’s every smell you can imagine. People are cooking, eatingtakeaways in the streets. Some family has a shack that’s jury-rigged onto the backof someone else’s shack, and they don’t have any running water, so they’ve bathedin a bucket from the outdoor tap and then dumped the dirty water in the street,where it runs into the river of sewerage that’s already there because the watersystem has backed up again. There’s a guy fixing cars who thinks he knows whathe’s doing, but he doesn’t. He’s dumping old motor oil into the street, and now theoil is combining with the dirty bathwater to make a river of filth running down thestreet. There’s probably a goat hanging around—there’s always a goat. As you’rewalking, sound washes over you, the steady thrum of human activity, peopletalking in a dozen different languages, chatting, haggling, arguing. There’s music

playing constantly. You’ve got traditional South African music coming from onecorner, someone blasting Dolly Parton from the next corner, and somebodydriving past pumping the Notorious B.I.G.The hood was a complete sensory overload for me, but within the chaos therewas order, a system, a social hierarchy based on where you lived. First Avenue wasnot cool at all because it was right next to the commotion of the minibus rank.Second Avenue was nice because it had semi-houses that were built when therewas still some sort of formal settlement going on. Third, Fourth, and FifthAvenues were nicer—for the township. These were the established families, the oldmoney. Then from Sixth Avenue on down it got really shitty, more shacks andshanties. There were some schools, a few soccer fields. There were a couple ofhostels, giant projects built by the government for housing migrant workers. Younever wanted to go there. That’s where the serious gangsters were. You only wentthere if you needed to buy an AK-47.After Twentieth Avenue you hit the Jukskei River, and on the far side of that,across the Roosevelt Street Bridge, was East Bank, the newest, nicest part of thehood. East Bank was where the government had gone in, cleared out the squattersand their shacks, and started to build actual homes. It was still low-incomehousing, but decent two-bedroom houses with tiny yards. The families who livedthere had a bit of money and usually sent their kids out of the hood to betterschools, like Sandringham. Bongani’s parents lived in East Bank, at the corner ofRoosevelt and Springbok Crescent, and after walking from the minibus rankthrough the hood, we wound up there, hanging around outside his house on thelow brick wall down the middle of Springbok Crescent, doing nothing, shootingthe shit. I didn’t know it then, but I was about to spend the next three years of mylife hanging out at that very spot.—I graduated from high school when I was seventeen, and by that point life at homehad become toxic because of my stepfather. I didn’t want to be there anymore, andmy mom agreed that I should move out. She helped me move to a cheap, roach-infested flat in a building down the road. My plan, insofar as I had one, was to goto university to be a computer programmer, but we couldn’t afford the tuition. Ineeded to make money. The only way I knew how to make money was sellingpirated CDs, and one of the best places to sell CDs was in the hood, because that’swhere the minibus rank was. Minibus drivers were always looking for new songsbecause having good music was something they used to attract customers.Another nice thing about the hood was that it’s super cheap. You can get byon next to nothing. There’s a meal you can get in the hood called a kota. It’s aquarter loaf of bread. You scrape out the bread, then you fill it with fried potatoes,a slice of baloney, and some pickled mango relish called achar. That costs a coupleof rand. The more money you have, the more upgrades you can buy. If you have abit more money you can throw in a hot dog. If you have a bit more than that, you

can throw in a proper sausage, like a bratwurst, or maybe a fried egg. The biggestone, with all the upgrades, is enough to feed three people.For us, the ultimate upgrade was to throw on a slice of cheese. Cheese wasalways the thing because it was so expensive. Forget the gold standard—the hoodoperated on the cheese standard. Cheese on anything was money. If you got aburger, that was cool, but if you got a cheeseburger, that meant you had moremoney than a guy who just got a hamburger. Cheese on a sandwich, cheese in yourfridge, that meant you were living the good life. In any township in South Africa, ifyou had a bit of money, people would say, “Oh, you’re a cheese boy.” In essence:You’re not really hood because your family has enough money to buy cheese.In Alex, because Bongani and his crew lived in East Bank, they wereconsidered cheese boys. Ironically, because they lived on the first street just overthe river, they were looked down on as the scruff of East Bank and the kids in thenicer houses higher up in East Bank were the cheesier cheese boys. Bongani andhis crew would never admit to being cheese boys. They would insist, “We’re notcheese. We’re hood.” But then the real hood guys would say, “Eh, you’re not hood.You’re cheese.” “We’re not cheese,” Bongani’s guys would say, pointing further upEast Bank. “They’re cheese.” It was all a bunch of ridiculous posturing about whowas hood and who was cheese.Bongani was the leader of his crew, the guy who got everyone together andgot things moving. Then there was Mzi, Bongani’s henchman. Small guy, justwanted to tag along, be in the mix. Bheki was the drinks man, always finding usbooze and always coming up with an excuse to drink. Then there was Kakoatse.We called him G. Mr. Nice Guy. All G was interested in was women. If womenwere in the mix, he was in the game. Then, finally, there was Hitler, the life of theparty. Hitler just wanted to dance.Cheese boys were in a uniquely fucked situation when apartheid ended. It isone thing to be born in the hood and know that you will never leave the hood. Butthe cheese boy has been shown the world outside. His family has done okay. Theyhave a house. They’ve sent him to a decent school; maybe he’s even matriculated.He has been given more potential, but he has not been given more opportunity.He has been given an awareness of the world that is out there, but he has not beengiven the means to reach it.The unemployment rate, technically speaking, was “lower” in South Africaduring apartheid, which makes sense. There was slavery—that’s how everyone wasemployed. When democracy came, everyone had to be paid a minimum wage. Thecost of labor went up, and suddenly millions of people were out of work. Theunemployment rate for young black men post-apartheid shot up, sometimes ashigh as 50 percent. What happens to a lot of guys is they finish high school andthey can’t afford university, and even little retail jobs can be hard to come by whenyou’re from the hood and you look and talk a certain way. So, for many young menin South Africa’s townships, freedom looks like this: Every morning they wake up,

maybe their parents go to work or maybe not. Then they go outside and chill onthe corner the whole day, talking shit. They’re free, they’ve been taught how tofish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.—One of the first things I learned in the hood is that there is a very fine line betweencivilian and criminal. We like to believe we live in a world of good guys and badguys, and in the suburbs it’s easy to believe that, because getting to know a careercriminal in the suburbs is a difficult thing. But then you go to the hood and you seethere are so many shades in between.In the hood, gangsters were your friends and neighbors. You knew them. Youtalked to them on the corner, saw them at parties. They were a part of your world.You knew them from before they became gangsters. It wasn’t, “Hey, that’s a crackdealer.” It was, “Oh, little Jimmy’s selling crack now.” The weird thing about thesegangsters was that they were all, at a glance, identical. They drove the same redsports car. They dated the same beautiful eighteen-year-old girls. It was strange. Itwas like they didn’t have personalities; they shared a personality. One could be theother, and the other could be the one. They’d each studied how to be thatgangster.In the hood, even if you’re not a hardcore criminal, crime is in your life insome way or another. There are degrees of it. It’s everyone from the mom buyingsome food that fell off the back of a truck to feed her family, all the way up to thegangs selling military-grade weapons and hardware. The hood made me realizethat crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do:crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need supportand a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs andopportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crimedoesn’t discriminate.My life of crime started off small, selling pirated CDs on the corner. That initself was a crime, and today I feel like I owe all these artists money for stealingtheir music, but by hood standards it didn’t even qualify as illegal. At the time itnever occurred to any of us that we were doing anything wrong—if copying CDs iswrong, why would they make CD writers?The garage of Bongani’s house opened up onto Springbok Cresent. Everymorning we’d open the doors, run an extension cord out into the street, set up atable, and play music. People would walk by and ask, “What is that? Can I get one,please?” Our corner was also where a lot of minibus drivers ended their routes andturned around to loop back to the minibus rank. They’d swing by, place an order,come back, pick it up. Swing by, place an order, come back, pick it up. We spentour whole day running out to them, going back to the garage to make more mixes,and going back out to sell. There was a converted shipping container around thecorner where we’d hang out when we got tired of the wall. It had a pay phoneinstalled inside that we’d use to call people. When things were slow we’d wander

back and forth between the container and the wall, talking and hanging out withthe other people with nothing to do in the middle of the day. We’d talk to drugdealers, talk to gangsters. Every now and then the cops would come crashingthrough. A day in the life of the hood. Next day, same thing.Selling slowly evolved into hustling because Bongani saw all the angles andknew how to exploit them. Like Tom, Bongani was a hustler. But where Tom wasonly about the short con, Bongani had schemes: If we do this, we get that, then wecan flip that for the other thing, which gives us the leverage we need to getsomething bigger. Some minibus drivers couldn’t pay up front, for example. “Idon’t have the money, because I’ve just started my shift,” they’d say. “But I neednew music. Can I owe you guys some form of credit? I’ll owe you a ride. I’ll payyou at the end of my shift, at the end of the week?” So we started letting driversbuy on credit, charging them a bit of interest.We started making more money. Never more than a few hundred, maybe athousand rand at a time, but it was all cash on hand. Bongani was quick to realizethe position we were in. Cash is the one thing everyone in the hood needs.Everyone’s looking for a short-term loan for something, to pay a bill or pay a fineor just hold things together. People started coming to us and asking for money.Bongani would cut a deal, and then he’d come to me. “Yo, we’re going to make adeal with this guy. We’re going to loan him a hundred, and he’s going to give usback one-twenty at the end of the week.” I’d say okay. Then the guy would comeback and give us 120 rand. Then we did it again. Then we did it some more. Westarted to double our money, then triple our money.Cash gave us leverage in the hood’s barter economy as well. It’s commonknowledge that if you’re standing at a corner of a main street in the hood,somebody’s going to try to sell you something. “Yo, yo, yo, man. You want someweed?” “You wanna buy a VCR?” “You wanna buy a DVD player?” “Yo, I’m sellinga TV.” That’s just how it works.Let’s say we see two guys haggling on the corner, a crackhead trying to sell aDVD player and some working dude who wants it but doesn’t have the moneybecause he hasn’t got his wages yet. They’re going back and forth, but thecrackhead wants the money now. Crackheads don’t wait. There’s no layaway planwith a crackhead. So Bongani steps in and takes the working guy aside.“Look, I understand you can’t pay for the DVD player now,” Bongani says.“But how much are you willing to pay for it?”“I’ll pay one-twenty,” he says.“Okay, cool.”Then Bongani takes the crackhead aside.“How much do you want for the DVD player?”“I want one-forty.”

“Okay, listen. You’re a crackhead. This is a stolen DVD player. I’m going togive you fifty.”The crackhead protests a bit, but then he takes the money because he’s acrackhead and it’s cash and crack is all about the now. Then Bongani goes back tothe working guy.“All right. We’ll do one-twenty. Here’s your DVD player. It’s yours.”“But I don’t have the one-twenty.”“It’s cool. You can take it now, only instead of one-twenty you give us one-forty when you get your wages.”“Okay.”So now we’ve invested 50 rand with the crackhead and that gets us 140 fromthe working guy. But Bongani would see a way to flip it and grow it again. Let’s saythis guy who bought the DVD player worked at a shoe store.“How much do you pay for a pair of Nikes with your staff discount?” Bonganiwould ask.“I can get a pair of Nikes for one-fifty.”“Okay, instead of you giving us one-forty, we’ll give you ten and you get us apair of Nikes with your discount.”So now this guy’s walking away with a DVD player and 10 rand in his pocket.He’s feeling like he got a good deal. He brings us the Nikes and then we go to oneof the cheesier cheese boys up in East Bank and we say, “Yo, dude, we know youwant the new Jordans. They’re three hundred in the shops. We’ll sell them to youfor two hundred.” We sell him the shoes, and now we’ve gone and turned 60 randinto 200.That’s the hood. Someone’s always buying, someone’s always selling, and thehustle is about trying to be in the middle of that whole thing. None of it was legal.Nobody knew where anything came from. The guy who got us Nikes, did he reallyhave a “staff discount”? You don’t know. You don’t ask. It’s just, “Hey, look what Ifound” and “Cool, how much do you want?” That’s the international code.At first I didn’t know not to ask. I remember one time we bought a car stereoor something like that.“But who did this belong to?” I said.“Eh, don’t worry about it,” one of the guys told me. “White people haveinsurance.”“Insurance?”“Yeah, when white people lose stuff they have insurance policies that paythem cash for what they’ve lost, so it’s like they’ve lost nothing.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Sounds nice.”And that was as far as we ever thought about it: When white people lose stuffthey get money, just another nice perk of being white.It’s easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthyenough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has differentnotions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, andwhat level of crime they’re willing to participate in. If a crackhead comes throughand he’s got a crate of Corn Flakes boxes he’s stolen out of the back of asupermarket, the poor mom isn’t thinking, I’m aiding and abetting a criminal bybuying these Corn Flakes. No. She’s thinking, My family needs food and this guyhas Corn Flakes, and she buys the Corn Flakes.My own mother, my super-religious, law-abiding mother who used to shit onme about breaking the rules and learning to behave, I’ll never forget one day Icame home and in the kitchen was a giant box of frozen burger patties, like twohundred of them, from a takeaway place called Black Steer. A burger at BlackSteer cost at least 20 rand.“What the hell is this?” I said.“Oh, some guy at work had these and was selling them,” she said. “I got agreat discount.”“But where did he get it from?”“I don’t know. He said he knew somebody who—”“Mom, he stole it.”“We don’t know that.”“We do know that. Where the hell is some guy going to get all of these burgerpatties from, randomly?”Of course, we ate the burgers. Then we thanked God for the meal.When Bongani first said to me, “Let’s go to the hood,” I thought we weregoing to sell CDs and DJ parties in the hood. It turned out that we were sellingCDs and DJing parties in order to capitalize a payday-lending and pawnshopoperation in the hood. Very quickly that became our core business.Every day in the hood was the same. I’d wake up early. Bongani would meetme at my flat and we’d catch a minibus to Alex with my computer, carrying thegiant tower and the giant, heavy monitor the whole way. We’d set it up inBongani’s garage, and start the first batch of CDs. Then we’d walk. We’d go downto the corner of Nineteenth and Roosevelt for breakfast. When you’re trying tostretch your money, food is where you have to be careful. You have to plan oryou’ll eat your profits. So every morning for breakfast we eat vetkoek, which isfried dough, basically. Those were cheap, like 50 cents a pop. We could buy abunch of those and have enough energy to sustain us until later on in the day.

Then we’d sit on the corner and eat. While we ate, we’d be picking up ordersfrom the minibus drivers as they went past. After that we’d go back to Bongani’sgarage, listen to music, lift weights, make the CDs. Around ten or eleven, thedrivers would start coming back from their morning routes. We’d take the CDsand head out to the corner for them to pick up their stuff. Then we’d just be on thecorner, hanging out, meeting characters, seeing who came by, seeing where theday was going to take us. A guy needs this. A guy’s selling that. You never knewwhat it was going to be.There was always a big rush of business at lunch. We’d be all over Alexandra,hitting different shops and corners, making deals with everyone. We’d get freerides from the minibus drivers because we’d hop in with them and use it as anopportunity to talk about what music they needed, but secretly we were ridingwith the guy for free. “Hey, we want to collect orders. We’ll talk to you while youdrive. What do you need? What music are you looking for? Do you need the newMaxwell? Okay, we got the new Maxwell. Okay, we’ll talk to you later. We’ll jumpout here.” Then we’d hop on another ride going wherever we were going next.After lunch, business would die down, and that’s when we’d get our lunch,usually the cheapest thing we could afford, like a smiley with some maize meal. Asmiley is a goat’s head. They’re boiled and covered with chili pepper. We call themsmileys because when you’re done eating all the meat off it, the goat looks like it’ssmiling at you from the plate. The cheeks and the tongue are quite delicious, butthe eyes are disgusting. They pop in your mouth. You put the eyeball into yourmouth and you bite it, and it’s just a ball of pus that pops. It has no crunch. It hasno chew. It has no flavor that is appetizing in any way.After lunch we’d head back to the garage, relax, sleep off the meal, and makemore CDs. In the afternoons we’d see a lot of moms. Moms loved us. They weresome of our best customers. Since moms run the household, they’re the oneslooking to buy that box of soap that fell off the back of the truck, and they weremore likely to buy it from us than from some crackhead. Dealing with crackheadsis unpleasant. We were upstanding, well-spoken East Bank boys. We could evencharge a premium because we added that layer of respectability to the transaction.Moms are also often the most in need of short-term loans, to pay for this or thatfor the family. Again, they’d rather deal with us than with some gangster loanshark. Moms knew we weren’t going to break anyone’s legs if they couldn’t pay.We didn’t believe in that. Also we weren’t capable of it—let’s not forget that part.But that’s where Bongani’s brilliance came in. He always knew what a personcould provide pending their failure to pay.We made some of the craziest trades. Moms in the hood are protective of theirdaughters, especially if their daughters are pretty. In Alex there were girls who gotlocked up. They went to school, came straight home, and went straight into thehouse. They weren’t allowed to leave. Boys weren’t allowed to talk to them, weren’teven allowed to hang around the house—none of that. Some guy was always going

on about some locked-away girl: “She’s so beautiful. I’ll do anything to get withher.” But he couldn’t. Nobody could.Then that mom would need a loan. Once we lent her the money, until shepaid us back she couldn’t chase us away from her house. We’d go by and hang out,chat, make small talk. The daughter would be right there, but the mom couldn’tsay, “Don’t talk to those boys!” The loan gave us access to establish a relationshipwith the mom. We’d get invited to stay for dinner. Once the mom knew we werenice, upstanding guys, she’d agree to let us take her daughter to a party as long aswe promised to get her home safely. So then we’d go to the guy who’d been sodesperate to meet the daughter.“Hey, let’s make a deal. We’ll bring the girl to your party and you get to hangout with her. How much can you give us?”“I don’t have money,” he’d say, “but I have some cases of beer.”“Okay, so tonight we’re going to this party. You give us two cases of beer forthe party.”“Cool.”Then we’d go to the party. We’d invite the girl, who was usually thrilled toescape her mother’s prison. The guy would bring the beer, he’d get to hang outwith the girl, we’d write off the mom’s debt to show her our gratitude, and we’dmake our money back selling the beer. There was always a way to make it work.And often that was the most fun part: working the angles, solving the puzzle,seeing what goes where, who needs what, whom we can connect with who canthen get us the money.At the peak of our operation we probably had around 10,000 rand in capital.We had loans going out and interest coming in. We had our stockpile of Jordansand DVD players we’d bought to resell. We also had to buy blank CDs, hireminibuses to go to our DJ gigs, feed five guys three times a day. We kept track ofeverything on the computer. Having lived in my mom’s world, I knew how to dospreadsheets. We had a Microsoft Excel document laid out: everybody’s name,how much they owed, when they paid, when they didn’t pay.After work was when business started to pick up. Minibus drivers picking upone last order, men coming home from work. The men weren’t looking for soapand Corn Flakes. They wanted the gear—DVD players, CD players, PlayStationgames. More guys would come through selling stuff, too, because they’d been outhustling and stealing all day. There’d be a guy selling a cellphone, a guy sellingsome leather jackets, a guy selling shoes. There was this one dude who looked likea black version of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. He’d always come by at the endof his shift with the most random useless crap, like an electric toothbrush withoutthe charger. One time he brought us an electric razor.“What the hell is this?”

“It’s an electric razor?”“An electric razor? We’re black. Do you know what these things do to ourskin? Do you see anyone around here who can use an electric razor?”We never knew where he was getting this stuff from. Because you don’t ask.Eventually we pieced it together, though: He worked at the airport. It was all craphe was boosting from people’s luggage.Slowly the rush would start to taper off and we’d wind down. We’d make ourlast collections, go over our CD stock, balance our accounts. If there was a party toDJ that night we’d start getting ready for that. Otherwise, we’d buy a few beersand sit around and drink, talk about the day, listen to the gunshots in the distance.Gunshots went off every night, and we’d always try to guess what kind of gun itwas. “That’s a nine-millimeter.” Usually there’d be a police chase, cop cars flyingthrough after some guy with a stolen car. Then everyone would go home fordinner with their families. I’d take my computer, get back in a minibus, ride home,sleep, and then come back and do it all again the next day.—A year passed. Then two. I had stopped planning for school, and was no closer tohaving the money to enroll.The tricky thing about the hood is that you’re always working, working,working, and you feel like something’s happening, but really nothing’s happeningat all. I was out there every day from seven a.m. to seven p.m., and every day itwas: How do we turn ten rand into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty?How do I turn fifty into a hundred? At the end of the day we’d spend it on foodand maybe some beers, and then we’d go home and come back and it was: How dowe turn ten into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? It was a whole day’swork to flip that money. You had to be walking, be moving, be thinking. You hadto get to a guy, find a guy, meet a guy. There were many days we’d end up back atzero, but I always felt like I’d been very productive.Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up howmuch you read in a year on the Internet—tweets, Facebook posts, lists—you’veread the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in ayear. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put intominimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel. If I’d put all that energy into studying I’d haveearned an MBA. Instead I was majoring in hustling, something no universitywould give me a degree for.When I first went into Alex, I was drawn by the electricity and the excitementof it, but more important, I was accepted there, more so than I’d been in highschool or anywhere else. When I first showed up, a couple of people raised aneyebrow. “Who’s this colored kid?” But the hood doesn’t judge. If you want to bethere, you can be there. Because I didn’t live in the hood I was technically anoutsider in the hood, but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like one.

The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goesinto getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who amI? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s notlooked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’salways worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, becausethe biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist ina state of suspended animation.The hood has a wonderful sense of community to it as well. Everyone knowseveryone, from the crackhead all the way through to the policeman. People takecare of one another. The way it works in the hood is that if any mom asks you todo something, you have to say yes. “Can I send you?” is the phrase. It’s likeeveryone’s your mom, and you’re everyone’s kid.“Can I send you?”“Yeah, whaddya need?”“I need you to go buy milk and bread.”“Yeah, cool.”Then she gives you some money and you go buy milk and bread. As long asyou aren’t busy and it doesn’t cost you anything, you don’t say no.The biggest thing in the hood is that you have to share. You can’t get rich onyour own. You have money? Why aren’t you helping people? The old lady on theblock needs help, everyone pitches in. You’re buying beer, you buy beer foreveryone. You spread it around. Everyone must know that your success benefitsthe community in one way or another, or you become a target.The township polices itself as well. If someone’s caught stealing, the townshipdeals with them. If someone’s caught breaking into a house, the township dealswith them. If you’re caught raping a woman, pray to God the police find youbefore the township does. If a woman is being hit, people don’t get involved. Thereare too many questions with a beating. What’s the fight about? Who’s responsible?Who started it? But rape is rape. Theft is theft. You’ve desecrated the community.The hood was strangely comforting, but comfort can be dangerous. Comfortprovides a floor but also a ceiling. In our crew, our friend G was like the rest of us,unemployed, hanging out. Then he got a job at a nice clothing store. Everymorning he went to work, and the guys would tease him about going to work.We’d see him headed out all dressed up, and everyone would be laughing at him.“Oh, G, look at you in your fancy clothes!” “Oh, G, going to go see the white mantoday, huh?” “Oh, G, don’t forget to bring some books back from the library!”One morning, after a month of G working at the place, we were hanging outon the wall, and G came out in his slippers and his socks. He wasn’t dressed forwork.

“Yo, G, what’s going on? What’s up with the job?”“Oh, I don’t work there anymore.”“Why?”“They accused me of stealing something and I got fired.”And I’ll never forget thinking to myself that it felt like he did it on purpose. Hesabotaged himself so that he’d get accepted back into the group again.The hood has a gravitational pull. It never leaves you behind, but it also neverlets you leave. Because by making the choice to leave, you’re insulting the placethat raised you and made you and never turned you away. And that place fightsyou back.As soon as things start going well for you in the hood, it’s time to go. Becausethe hood will drag you back in. It will find a way. There will be a guy who steals athing and puts it in your car and the cops find it— something. You can’t stay. Youthink you can. You’ll start doing better and you’ll bring your hood friends out to anice club, and the next thing you know somebody starts a fight and one of yourfriends pulls a gun and somebody’s getting shot and you’re left standing aroundgoing, “What just happened?”The hood happened.—One night I was DJ’ing a party, not in Alex but right outside Alex in LombardyEast, a nicer, middle-class black neighborhood. The police were called about thenoise. They came busting in wearing riot gear and pointing machine guns. That’show our police roll. We don’t have small and then big. What Americans call SWATis just our regular police. They came looking for the source of the music, and themusic was coming from me. This one cop came over to where I was with mycomputer and pulled this massive assault rifle on me.“You gotta shut this down right now.”“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m shutting it down.”But I was running Windows 95. Windows 95 took forever to shut down. I wasclosing windows, shutting down programs. I had one of those fat Seagate drivesthat damaged easily, and I didn’t want to cut the power and possibly damage thedrive. This cop clearly didn’t give a fuck about any of that.“Shut it down! Shut it down!”“I am! I’m shutting it down! I have to close the programs!”The crowd was getting angry, and the cop was getting nervous. He turned hisgun away from me and shot the computer. Only he clearly didn’t know anythingabout computers because he shot the monitor. The monitor exploded but themusic kept playing. Now there was chaos—music blaring and everyone running

and panicking because of the gunshot. I yanked the power cord out of the tower toshut the thing down. Then the cops started firing tear gas into the crowd.The tear gas had nothing to do with me or the music. Tear gas is just what thepolice use to shut down parties in black neighborhoods, like the club turning onthe lights to tell everyone to go home.I lost the hard drive. Even though the cop shot the monitor the explosionsomehow fried the thing. The computer would still boot up, but it couldn’t readthe drive. My music library was gone. Even if I’d had the money for a new harddrive, it had taken me years to amass the music collection. There was no way toreplace it. The DJ’ing business was over. The CD-selling business was done. All ofa sudden our crew lost its main revenue stream. All we had left was the hustle, andwe hustled even harder, taking the bit of cash we had on hand and trying to doubleit, buying this to flip it for that. We started eating into our savings, and in less thana month we were running on dust.Then, one evening after work, our friend from the airport, the black Mr.Burns, came by.“Hey, look what I found,” he said.“What’ve you got?”“A camera.”I’ll never forget that camera. It was a digital camera. We bought it from him,and I took it and turned it on. It was full of pictures of a nice white family onvacation, and I felt like shit. The other things we’d bought had never mattered tome. Nikes, electric toothbrushes, electric razors. Who cares? Yeah, some guymight get fired because of the pallet of Corn Flakes that went missing from thesupermarket, but that’s degrees removed. You don’t think about it. But thiscamera had a face. I went through those pictures, knowing how much my familypictures meant to me, and I thought, I haven’t stolen a camera. I’ve stolensomeone’s memories. I’ve stolen part of someone’s life.It’s such a strange thing, but in two years of hustling I never once thought of itas a crime. I honestly didn’t think it was bad. It’s just stuff people found. Whitepeople have insurance. Whatever rationalization was handy. In society, we dohorrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. We don’tsee their face. We don’t see them as people. Which was the whole reason the hoodwas built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out ofmind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would seethat slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don’t see theramifications of what we do to others, because we don’t live with them. It would bea whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprimemortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we couldsee one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth itto us to commit the crimes in the first place.

As much as we needed the money, I never sold the camera. I felt too guilty,like it would be bad karma, which I know sounds stupid and it didn’t get thefamily their camera back, but I just couldn’t do it. That camera made me confrontthe fact that there were people on the other end of this thing I was doing, and whatI was doing was wrong.—One night our crew got invited to dance in Soweto against another crew. Hitlerwas going to compete with their best dancer, Hector, who was one of the bestdancers in South Africa at the time. This invitation was a huge deal. We weregoing over there repping our hood. Alex and Soweto have always had a hugerivalry. Soweto was seen as the snobbish township and Alexandra was seen as thegritty and dirty township. Hector was from Diepkloof, which was the nice, well-offpart of Soweto. Diepkloof was where the first million-rand houses were built afterdemocracy. “Hey, we’re not a township anymore. We’re building nice things now.”That was the attitude. That’s who we were up against. Hitler practiced a wholeweek.We took a minibus over to Diepkloof the night of the dance, me and Bongani,Mzi and Bheki and G, and Hitler. Hector won the competition. Then G was caughtkissing one of their girls, and it turned into a fight and everything broke down. Onour way back to Alex, around one in the morning, as we were pulling out ofDiepkloof to get on the freeway, some cops pulled our minibus over. They madeeveryone get out and they searched it. We were standing outside, lined upalongside the car, when one of the cops came back.“We’ve found a gun,” he said. “Whose gun is it?”We all shrugged.“We don’t know,” we said.“Nope, somebody knows. It’s somebody’s gun.”“Officer, we really don’t know,” Bongani said.He slapped Bongani hard across the face.“You’re bullshitting me!”Then he went down the line, slapping each of us across the face, berating usabout the gun. We couldn’t do anything but stand there and take it.“You guys are trash,” the cop said. “Where are you from?”“Alex.”“Ohhhhh, okay, I see. Dogs from Alex. You come here and you rob people andyou rape women and you hijack cars. Bunch of fucking hoodlums.”“No, we’re dancers. We don’t know—”

“I don’t care. You’re all going to jail until we figure out whose gun this is.”At a certain point we realized what was going on. This cop was shaking usdown for a bribe. “Spot fine” is the euphemism everyone uses. You go through thiselaborate dance with the cop where you say the thing without saying the thing.“Can’t we do something?” you ask the officer.“What do you want me to do?”“We’re really sorry, Officer. What can we do?”“You tell me.”Then you’re supposed to make up a story whereby you indicate to the cop howmuch money you have on you. Which we couldn’t do because we didn’t have anymoney. So he took us to jail. It was a public bus. It could have been anyone’s gun,but the guys from Alex were the only ones who got arrested. Everyone else in thecar was free to go. The cops took us to the police station and threw us in a cell andpulled us out one by one for questioning. When they pulled me aside I had to givemy home address: Highlands North. The cop gave me the most confused look.“You’re not from Alex,” he said. “What are you doing with these crooks?” Ididn’t know what to say. He glared at me hard. “Listen here, rich boy. You thinkit’s fun running around with these guys? This isn’t play-play anymore. Just tell methe truth about your friends and the gun, and I’ll let you go.”I told him no, and he threw me back in the cell. We spent the night, and thenext day I called a friend, who said he could borrow the money from his dad to getus out. Later that day the dad came down and paid the money. The cops keptcalling it “bail,” but it was a bribe. We were never formally arrested or processed.There was no paperwork.We got out and everything was fine, but it rattled us. Every day we were out inthe streets, hustling, trying to act as if we were in some way down with the gangs,but the truth was we were always more cheese than hood. We had created this ideaof ourselves as a defense mechanism to survive in the world we were living in.Bongani and the other East Bank guys, because of where they were from, whatthey looked like—they just had very little hope. You’ve got two options in thatsituation. You take the retail job, flip burgers at McDonald’s, if you’re one of thelucky few who even gets that much. The other option is to toughen up, put up thisfacade. You can’t leave the hood, so you survive by the rules of the hood.I chose to live in that world, but I wasn’t from that world. If anything, I wasan imposter. Day to day I was in it as much as everyone else, but the differencewas that in the back of my mind I knew I had other options. I could leave. Theycouldn’t.

Once, when I was ten years old, visiting my dad in Yeoville, I needed batteries for one of mytoys. My mom had refused to buy me new batteries because, of course, she thought it was awaste of money, so I snuck out to the shops and shoplifted a pack. A security guard busted meon the way out, pulled me into his office, and called my mom.“We’ve caught your son shoplifting batteries,” he said. “You need to come and fetch him.”“No,” she said. “Take him to jail. If he’s going to disobey he needs to learn theconsequences.”Then she hung up. The guard looked at me, confused. Eventually he let me go on theassumption that I was some wayward orphan, because what mother would send her ten-year-old child to jail?

THE WORLD DOESN’T LOVE YOUMy 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 thatwith 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 blackparents 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 thecorner we had a sign for it, a shorthand, clapping your wrists together like youwere 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 themback to the house, she didn’t even want them coming inside. “I don’t like thoseboys,” she’d say. She didn’t hate them personally; she hated what theyrepresented. “You and those boys get into so much shit,” she’d say. “You must becareful who you surround yourself with because where you are can determine whoyou are.”She said the thing she hated most about the hood was that it didn’t pressureme 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 notlike I’m going to university.”“Yes, but the pressure of the university is going to get you. I know you. Youwon’t sit by and watch these guys become better than you. If you’re in anenvironment that is positive and progressive, you too will become that. I keeptelling 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 alesson.”

Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay theirkid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer—the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’talways work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needslove. 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 onmobile phones, and they were selling them at such a ridiculous price I knewBongani and I could flip them in the hood for a profit. This shop was out in thesuburbs, too far to walk and too out-of-the-way to take a minibus. Fortunately mystepfather’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 wouldsay I was test driving them to make sure they’d been repaired correctly. Abeldidn’t think that was funny. I’d been caught many times, caught and subjected tomy mother’s wrath. But that had never stopped me from doing anything.Most of these junkers weren’t street legal. They didn’t have properregistrations or proper number plates. Luckily, Abel also had a stack of oldnumber plates in the back of the garage. I quickly learned I could just put one onan old car and hit the road. I was nineteen, maybe twenty, not thinking about anyof 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, slappedsome 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 reasonwhen they pull you over. Cops pull you over because they’re cops and they havethe power to pull you over; it’s as simple as that. I used to watch American movieswhere cops would pull people over and say, “You didn’t signal” or “Your taillight’sout.” I’d always wonder, Why do American cops bother lying? One thing Iappreciate about South Africa is that we have not yet refined the system to thepoint 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 tosay, “Hey, I know you guys are racially profiling me!” But I couldn’t argue the casebecause I was, at that moment, actually breaking the law. The cop walked up to mywindow, asked me the standard cop questions. Where are you going? Is this yourcar? Whose car is this? I couldn’t answer. I completely froze.Being young, funnily enough, I was more worried about getting in troublewith my parents than with the law. I’d had run-ins with the cops in Alexandra, inSoweto, 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 recognizethat they’re doing a job.Your parents, on the other hand, are not rational at all. They have served asjudge, jury, and executioner for your entire childhood, and it feels like they giveyou a life sentence for every misdemeanor. In that moment, when I should havebeen scared of the cop, all I was thinking was Shit shit shit; I’m in so much troublewhen I get home.The cop called in the number-plate registration and discovered that it didn’tmatch the car. Now he was really on my case. “This car is not in your name!What’s going on with these plates?! Step out of the vehicle!” It was only then that Irealized: Ohhhhh, shit. Now I’m in real trouble. I stepped out of the car, and heput the cuffs on me and told me I was being arrested on suspicion of driving astolen vehicle. He took me in, and the car was impounded.The Hillbrow police station looks exactly like every other police station inSouth Africa. They were all built by the same contractor at the height of apartheid—separate nodes in the central nervous system of a police state. If you wereblindfolded and taken from one to the other, you probably wouldn’t even knowthat you’d changed locations. They’re sterile, institutional, with fluorescent lightsand cheap floor tile, like a hospital. My cop walked me in and sat me down at thefront booking desk. I was charged and fingerprinted.In the meantime, they’d been checking out the car, which wasn’t going wellfor me, either. Whenever I borrowed cars from Abel’s workshop, I tried to take thejunkers rather than a real client’s car; I thought I’d get in less trouble that way.That was a mistake. The Mazda, being one of Abel’s junkers, didn’t have a cleartitle of ownership. If it had had an owner, the cops would have called the owner,the owner would have explained that the car had been dropped off for repairs, andthe whole thing would have been sorted out. Since the car didn’t have an owner, Icouldn’t prove I hadn’t stolen it.Carjackings were common in South Africa at the time, too. So common youweren’t even surprised when they happened. You’d have a friend coming over for adinner party and you’d get a call.“Sorry. Got carjacked. Gonna be late.”“Ah, that sucks. Hey, guys! Dave got carjacked.”“Sorry, Dave!”And the party would continue. And that’s if the person survived thecarjacking. Often they didn’t. People were getting shot for their cars all the time.Not only could I not prove I hadn’t stolen the car, I couldn’t prove I hadn’tmurdered someone for it, either. The cops were grilling me. “You kill anyone to getthat car, boy? Eh? You a killer?”

I was in deep, deep trouble. I had only one lifeline: my parents. One callwould have fixed everything. “This is my stepfather. He’s a mechanic. I borrowedhis car when I shouldn’t have.” Done. At worst I’d get a slap on the wrist fordriving a car that wasn’t registered. But what would I be getting at home?I sat there in the police station—arrested for suspicion of grand theft auto, aplausible suspect for carjacking or murder—and debated whether I should call myparents or go to jail. With my stepfather I was thinking, He might actually kill me.In my mind that was an entirely realistic scenario. With my mother I was thinking,She’s going to make this worse. She’s not the character witness I want right now.She won’t help me. Because she’d told me she wouldn’t. “If you ever get arrested,don’t call me.” I needed someone sympathetic to my plight, and I didn’t believeshe was that person. So I didn’t call my parents. I decided I didn’t need them. Iwas a man. I could go it alone. I used my call to phone my cousin and told him notto tell anyone what had happened while I figured out what to do—now I just hadto figure out what to do.I’d been picked up late in the afternoon, so by the time I was processed it wasclose to lights-out. I was spending the night in jail, like it or not. It was at thatpoint that a cop pulled me aside and told me what I was in for.The way the system works in South Africa is that you’re arrested and held in acell at the police station until your bail hearing. At the hearing, the judge looks atyour case, hears arguments from the opposing sides, and then he either dismissesthe charges or sets bail and a trial date. If you can make bail, you pay and gohome. But there are all sorts of ways your bail hearing can go wrong: You get somecourt-appointed lawyer who hasn’t read your case and doesn’t know what’s goingon. Your family can’t pay your bail. It could even be that the court’s backed up.“Sorry, we’re too busy. No more hearings today.” It doesn’t matter the reason.Once you leave jail, you can’t go back to jail. If your situation isn’t resolved thatday, you go to prison to await trial. In prison you’re housed with the peopleawaiting trial, not with the general population, but even the awaiting-trial sectionis incredibly dangerous because you have people picked up for traffic violations allthe way up to proper hardened criminals. You’re stuck there together, and you canbe there for days, weeks, maybe months. It’s the same way in America. If you’repoor, if you don’t know how the system works, you can slip through the cracks,and the next thing you know you’re in this weird purgatory where you’re not inprison but you’re not not in prison. You haven’t been convicted of any crime, butyou’re still locked up and can’t get out.This cop pulled me aside and said, “Listen, you don’t want to go to your bailhearing. They’ll give you a state attorney who won’t know what’s going on. He’llhave no time for you. He’ll ask the judge for a postponement, and then maybeyou’ll go free or maybe you won’t. Trust me, you don’t want to do that. You havethe right to stay here for as long as you like. You want to meet with a lawyer andset yourself up before you go anywhere near a court or a judge.” He wasn’t giving

me this advice out of the goodness of his heart. He had a deal with a defenseattorney, sending him clients in exchange for a kickback. He handed me theattorney’s business card, I called him, and he agreed to take my case. He told meto stay put while he handled everything.Now I needed money, because lawyers, as nice as they are, don’t do anythingfor free. I called a friend and asked him if he could ask his dad to borrow somemoney. He said he’d handle it. He talked to his dad, and the lawyer got his retainerthe next day.With the lawyer taken care of, I felt like I had things under control. I wasfeeling pretty slick. I’d handled the situation, and, most important, Mom and Abelwere none the wiser.When the time came for lights-out a cop came and took my stuff. My belt, mywallet, my shoelaces.“Why do you need my shoelaces?”“So you don’t hang yourself.”“Right.”Even when he said that, the gravity of my situation still wasn’t sinking in.Walking to the station’s holding cell, looking around at the other six guys in there,I was thinking, This is no big deal. Everything’s gonna be cool. I’m gonna get outof this. I thought that right up until the moment the cell door clanged shut behindme and the guard yelled, “Lights out!” That’s when I thought, Oh, shit. This is real.—The guards had given me a mat and a scratchy blanket. I rolled them out on theconcrete floor and tried to get comfortable. Every bad prison movie I’d ever seenwas racing through my head. I was thinking, I’m gonna get raped. I’m gonna getraped. I’m gonna get raped. But of course I didn’t get raped, because this wasn’tprison. It was jail, and there’s a big difference, as I would soon come tounderstand.I woke up the next morning with that fleeting sensation where you thinksomething has all been a dream. Then I looked around and remembered that itwasn’t. Breakfast came, and I settled in to wait.A day in jail is mostly silence punctuated by passing guards shoutingprofanities at you, doing roll call. Inside the holding cell nobody says anything.Nobody walks into a jail cell and says, “Hi, guys! I’m Brian!” Because everyone isafraid, and no one wants to appear vulnerable. Nobody wants to be the bitch.Nobody wants to be the guy getting killed. I didn’t want anyone to know that I wasjust a kid in for a traffic charge, so I reached back in my mind for all thestereotypes of what I imagined people act like in prison, and then I tried to act likethat.

In South Africa, everyone knows that colored gangsters are the most ruthless,the most savage. It’s a stereotype that’s fed to you your whole life. The mostnotorious colored gangs are the Numbers Gangs: the 26s, the 27s, the 28s. Theycontrol the prisons. They’re known for being brutally violent—maiming, torturing,raping, cutting off people’s heads—not for the sake of making money but just toprove how ruthless and savage they are, like Mexican drug cartels. In fact a lot ofthese gangs base their thing on those Mexican gangs. They have the same look: theConverse All Stars with the Dickies pants and the open shirt buttoned only at thetop.By the time I was a teenager, anytime I was profiled by cops or securityguards, it usually wasn’t because I was black but because I looked colored. I wentto a club once with my cousin and his friend. The bouncer searched Mlungisi,waved him in. He searched our friend, waved him in. Then he searched me andgot up in my face.“Where’s your knife?”“I don’t have a knife.”“I know you have a knife somewhere. Where is it?”He searched and searched and finally gave up and let me in, looking me overlike I was trouble.“No shit from you! Okay?”I figured that if I was in jail people were going to assume I was the kind ofcolored person who ends up in jail, a violent criminal. So I played it up. I put onthis character; I played the stereotype. Anytime the cops asked me questions Istarted speaking in broken Afrikaans with a thick colored accent. Imagine a whiteguy in America, just dark enough to pass for Latino, walking around jail doing badMexican-gangster dialogue from the movies. “Shit’s about to get loco, ese.” That’sbasically what I was doing—the South African version of that. This was mybrilliant plan to survive incarceration. But it worked. The guys in the cell with me,they were there for drunk driving, for domestic abuse, for petty theft. They had noidea what real colored gangsters were like. Everyone left me alone.We were all playing a game, only nobody knew we were playing it. When Iwalked in that first night, everyone was giving me this look: “I’m dangerous. Don’tfuck with me.” So I went, “Shit, these people are hardened criminals. I shouldn’tbe here, because I am not a criminal.” Then the next day everything turned overquickly. One by one, guys left to go to their hearings, I stayed to wait for mylawyer, and new people started to pitch up. Now I was the veteran, doing mycolored-gangster routine, giving the new guys the same look: “I’m dangerous.Don’t fuck with me.” And they looked at me and went, “Shit, he’s a hardenedcriminal. I shouldn’t be here, because I am not like him.” And round and round wewent.

At a certain point it occurred to me that every single person in that cell mightbe faking it. We were all decent guys from nice neighborhoods and good families,picked up for unpaid parking tickets and other infractions. We could have beenhaving a great time sharing meals, playing cards, and talking about women andsoccer. But that didn’t happen, because everyone had adopted this dangerous poseand nobody talked because everyone was afraid of who the other guys werepretending to be. Now those guys were going to get out and go home to theirfamilies and say, “Oh, honey, that was rough. Those were some real criminals inthere. There was this one colored guy. Man, he was a killer.”Once I had the game sorted out, I was good again. I relaxed. I was back tothinking, I got this. This is no big deal. The food was actually decent. For breakfastthey brought you these peanut butter sandwiches on thick slices of bread. Lunchwas chicken and rice. The tea was too hot, and it was more water than tea, but itwas drinkable. There were older, hard-time prisoners close to parole, and theirdetail was to come and clean the cells and circulate books and magazines for youto read. It was quite relaxing.There was one point when I remember eating a meal and saying to myself,This isn’t so bad. I hang around with a bunch of dudes. There’s no chores. No billsto pay. No one constantly nagging me and telling me what to do. Peanut buttersandwiches? Shit, I eat peanut butter sandwiches all the time. This is prettysweet. I could do this. I was so afraid of the ass-whooping waiting for me at homethat I genuinely considered going to prison. For a brief moment I thought I had aplan. “I’ll go away for a couple of years, come back, and say I was kidnapped, andmom will never know and she’ll just be happy to see me.”—On the third day, the cops brought in the largest man I’d ever seen. This guy washuge. Giant muscles. Dark skin. Hardened face. He looked like he could kill all ofus. Me and the other prisoners who’d been acting tough with one another—thesecond he walked in our tough-guy routines were over. Everyone was terrified. Weall stared at him. “Oh, fuck…”For whatever reason this guy was half naked when the cops picked him up.He was wearing clothes the police had scrounged up for him at the station, thistorn-up wifebeater that was way too small, pants so short on him they looked likecapris. He looked like a black version of the Incredible Hulk.This guy went and sat alone in the corner. Nobody said a word. Everyonewatched and waited, nervously, to see what he would do. Then one of the copscame back and called the Hulk over; they needed information from him. The copstarted asking him a bunch of questions, but the guy kept shaking his head andsaying he didn’t understand. The cop was speaking Zulu. The Hulk was speakingTsonga. Black person to black person, and neither could understand the other—the Tower of Babel. Few people in South Africa speak Tsonga, but since mystepfather was Tsonga I had picked it up along the way. I overheard the cop and

the other guy going back and forth with nothing getting across, so I stepped in andtranslated for them and sorted everything out.Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language heunderstands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes tohis heart.” He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else’slanguage, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, “Iunderstand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you asa human being.”That is exactly what happened with the Hulk. The second I spoke to him, thisface that had seemed so threatening and mean lit up with gratitude. “Ah, nakhensa, na khensa, na khensa. Hi wena mani? Mufana wa mukhaladi u xitielakwini xiTsonga? U huma kwini?” “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Who areyou? How does a colored guy know Tsonga? Where are you from?”Once we started talking I realized he wasn’t the Hulk at all. He was thesweetest man, a gentle giant, the biggest teddy bear in the world. He was simple,not educated. I’d assumed he was in for murder, for squashing a family to deathwith his bare hands, but it wasn’t anything like that. He’d been arrested forshoplifting PlayStation games. He was out of work and needed money to send tohis family back home, and when he saw how much these games sold for hethought he could steal a few and sell them to white kids and make a lot of money.As soon as he told me that, I knew he wasn’t some hardened criminal. I know theworld of pirated things—stolen videogames have no value because it’s cheaper andless risky to copy them, like Bolo’s parents did.I tried to help him out a bit. I told him my trick of putting off your bailhearing to get your defense together, so he stayed in the cell, too, biding his time,and we hit it off and hung out for a few days, having a good time, getting to knoweach other. No one else in the cell knew what to make of us, the ruthless coloredgangster and his menacing, Hulk-like friend. He told me his story, a South Africanstory that was all too familiar to me: The man grows up under apartheid, workingon a farm, part of what’s essentially a slave labor force. It’s a living hell but it’s atleast something. He’s paid a pittance but at least he’s paid. He’s told where to beand what to do every waking minute of his day. Then apartheid ends and hedoesn’t even have that anymore. He finds his way to Johannesburg, looking forwork, trying to feed his children back home. But he’s lost. He has no education. Hehas no skills. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know where to be. The worldhas been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the worldbecause he has none of the tools necessary to cope with it. So what does he do? Hetakes shit. He becomes a petty thief. He’s in and out of jail. He gets lucky and findssome construction work, but then he gets laid off from that, and a few days laterhe’s in a shop and he sees some PlayStation games and he grabs them, but hedoesn’t even know enough to know that he’s stolen something of no value.I felt terrible for him. The more time I spent in jail, the more I realized that

the law isn’t rational at all. It’s a lottery. What color is your skin? How muchmoney do you have? Who’s your lawyer? Who’s the judge? Shoplifting PlayStationgames was less of an offense than driving with bad number plates. He hadcommitted a crime, but he was no more a criminal than I was. The difference wasthat he didn’t have any friends or family to help him out. He couldn’t affordanything but a state attorney. He was going to go stand in the dock, unable tospeak or understand English, and everyone in the courtroom was going to assumethe worst of him. He was going to go to prison for a while and then be set free withthe same nothing he had going in. If I had to guess, he was around thirty-five,forty years old, staring down another thirty-five, forty years of the same.—The day of my hearing came. I said goodbye to my new friend and wished him thebest. Then I was handcuffed and put in the back of a police van and driven to thecourthouse to meet my fate. In South African courts, to minimize your exposureand your opportunities for escape, the holding cell where you await your hearingis a massive pen below the courtroom; you walk up a set of stairs into the dockrather than being escorted through the corridors. What happens in the holdingcell is you’re mixed in with the people who’ve been in prison awaiting trial forweeks and months. It’s a weird mix, everything from white-collar criminals toguys picked up on traffic stops to real, hardcore criminals covered with prisontattoos. It’s like the cantina scene from Star Wars, where the band’s playing musicand Han Solo’s in the corner and all of the bad guys and bounty hunters from allover the universe are hanging out—a wretched hive of scum and villainy, onlythere’s no music and there’s no Han Solo.I was with these people for only a brief window of time, but in that moment Isaw the difference between prison and jail. I saw the difference between criminalsand people who’ve committed crimes. I saw the hardness in people’s faces. Ithought back on how naive I’d been just hours before, thinking jail wasn’t so badand I could handle it. I was now truly afraid of what might happen to me.When I walked into that holding pen, I was a smooth-skinned, fresh-facedyoung man. At the time, I had a giant Afro, and the only way to control it was tohave it tied back in this ponytail thing that looked really girly. I looked likeMaxwell. The guards closed the door behind me, and this creepy old dude yelledout in Zulu from the back, “Ha, ha, ha! Hhe madoda! Angikaze ngibone indodaenhle kangaka! Sizoba nobusuku obuhle!” “Yo, yo, yo! Damn, guys. I’ve neverseen a man this beautiful before. It’s gonna be a good night tonight!”Fuuuuuuuuuck.Right next to me as I walked in was a young man having a completemeltdown, talking to himself, bawling his eyes out. He looked up and locked eyeswith me, and I guess he thought I looked like a kindred soul he could talk to. Hecame straight at me and started crying about how he’d been arrested and thrownin jail and the gangs had stolen his clothes and his shoes and raped him and beat

him every day. He wasn’t some ruffian. He was well-spoken, educated. He’d beenwaiting for a year for his case to be heard; he wanted to kill himself. That guy putthe fear of God in me.I looked around the holding cell. There were easily a hundred guys in there,all of them spread out and huddled into their clearly and unmistakably definedracial groups: a whole bunch of black people in one corner, the colored people in adifferent corner, a couple of Indians off to themselves, and a handful of white guysoff to one side. The guys who’d been with me in the police van, the second wewalked in, they instinctively, automatically, walked off to join the groups theybelonged to. I froze.I didn’t know where to go.I looked over at the colored corner. I was staring at the most notorious, mostviolent prison gang in South Africa. I looked like them, but I wasn’t them. Icouldn’t go over there doing my fake gangster shit and have them discover I was afraud. No, no, no. That game was over, my friend. The last thing I needed wascolored gangsters up against me.But then what if I went to the black corner? I know that I’m black and Iidentify as black, but I’m not a black person on the face of it, so would the blackguys understand why I was walking over? And what kind of shit would I start bygoing there? Because going to the black corner as a perceived colored personmight piss off the colored gangs even more than going to the colored corner as afake colored person. Because that’s what had happened to me my entire life.Colored people would see me hanging out with blacks, and they’d confront me,want to fight me. I saw myself starting a race war in the holding cell.“Hey! Why are you hanging out with the blacks?”“Because I am black.”“No, you’re not. You’re colored.”“Ah, yes. I know it looks that way, friend, but let me explain. It’s a funnystory, actually. My father is white and my mother is black and race is a socialconstruct, so…”That wasn’t going to work. Not here.All of this was happening in my head in an instant, on the fly. I was doingcrazy calculations, looking at people, scanning the room, assessing the variables. IfI go here, then this. If I go there, then that. My whole life was flashing before me—the playground at school, the spaza shops in Soweto, the streets of Eden Park—every time and every place I ever had to be a chameleon, navigate between groups,explain who I was. It was like the high school cafeteria, only it was the high schoolcafeteria from hell because if I picked the wrong table I might get beaten orstabbed or raped. I’d never been more scared in my life. But I still had to pick.Because racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don’t pick

sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side.That day I picked white. They just didn’t look like they could hurt me. It was ahandful of average, middle-aged white dudes. I walked over to them. We hung outfor a while, chatted a bit. They were mostly in for white-collar crimes, moneyschemes, fraud and racketeering. They’d be useless if anyone came over looking tostart trouble; they’d get their asses kicked as well. But they weren’t going to doanything to me. I was safe.Luckily the time went by fairly quickly. I was in there for only an hour before Iwas called up to court, where a judge would either let me go or send me to prisonto await trial. As I was leaving, one of the white guys reached over to me. “Makesure you don’t come back down here,” he said. “Cry in front of the judge; dowhatever you have to do. If you go up and get sent back down here, your life willnever be the same.”Up in the courtroom, I found my lawyer waiting. My cousin Mlungisi wasthere, too, in the gallery, ready to post my bail if things went my way.The bailiff read out my case number, and the judge looked up at me.“How are you?” he said.I broke down. I’d been putting on this tough-guy facade for nearly a week,and I just couldn’t do it anymore.“I-I’m not fine, Your Honor. I’m not fine.”He looked confused. “What?!”I said, “I’m not fine, sir. I’m really suffering.”“Why are you telling me this?”“Because you asked how I was.”“Who asked you?”“You did. You just asked me.”“I didn’t say, ‘How are you?’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Why would I waste timeasking ‘How are you?’! This is jail. I know everyone is suffering down there. If Iasked everyone ‘How are you?’ we’d be here all day. I said, ‘Who are you?’ Stateyour name for the record.”“Trevor Noah.”“Okay. Now we can carry on.”The whole courtroom started laughing, so then I started laughing, too. Butnow I was even more petrified because I didn’t want the judge to think I wasn’ttaking him seriously because I was laughing.It turned out that I needn’t have been worried. Everything that happened nexttook only a few minutes. My lawyer had talked to the prosecutor and everything

had been arranged beforehand. He presented my case. I had no priors. I wasn’tdangerous. There were no objections from the opposing side. The judge assignedmy trial date and set my bail, and I was free to go.I walked out of court and the light of day hit my face and I said, “Sweet Jesus,I am never going back there again.” It had been only a week, in a cell that wasn’tterribly uncomfortable with food that wasn’t half bad, but a week in jail is a long,long time. A week without shoelaces is a long, long time. A week with no clocks,with no sun, can feel like an eternity. The thought of anything worse, the thoughtof doing real time in a real prison, I couldn’t even imagine.—I drove with Mlungisi to his place, took a shower, and slept there. The next day hedropped me back at my mom’s house. I strolled up the driveway acting real casual.My plan was to say I’d been crashing with Mlungisi for a few days. I walked intothe house like nothing had happened. “Hey, Mom! What’s up?” Mom didn’t sayanything, didn’t ask me any questions. I was like, Okay. Cool. We’re good.I stayed for most of the day. Later in the afternoon we were sitting at thekitchen table, talking. I was telling all these stories, going on about everythingMlungisi and I had been up to that week, and I caught my mom giving me thislook, slowly shaking her head. It was a different look than I had ever seen her givebefore. It wasn’t “One day, I’m going to catch you.” It wasn’t anger or disapproval.It was disappointment. She was hurt.“What?” I said. “What is it?”She said, “Boy, who do you think paid your bail? Hmm? Who do you thinkpaid your lawyer? Do you think I’m an idiot? Did you think no one would tell me?”The truth came spilling out. Of course she’d known: the car. It had beenmissing the whole time. I’d been so wrapped up in dealing with jail and coveringmy tracks I’d forgotten that the proof of my crime was right there in the yard, thered Mazda missing from the driveway. And of course when I called my friend andhe’d asked his dad for the money for the lawyer, the dad had pressed him on whatthe money was for and, being a parent himself, had called my motherimmediately. She’d given my friend the money to pay the lawyer. She’d given mycousin the money to pay my bail. I’d spent the whole week in jail thinking I was soslick. But she’d known everything the whole time.“I know you see me as some crazy old bitch nagging at you,” she said, “but youforget the reason I ride you so hard and give you so much shit is because I loveyou. Everything I have ever done I’ve done from a place of love. If I don’t punishyou, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn’t love you. If thepolice get you, the police don’t love you. When I beat you, I’m trying to save you.When they beat you, they’re trying to kill you.”

My favorite thing to eat as a kid, and still my favorite dessert of all time, was custard andjelly, what Americans would call Jell-O. One Saturday my mom was planning for a big familycelebration and she made a huge bowl of custard and jelly and put it in the fridge. It had everyflavor: red, green, and yellow. I couldn’t resist it. That whole day, every time I walked past thefridge I’d pop my head in with a spoon and sneak a bite. This was a giant bowl, meant to lastfor a week for the whole family. I finished it in one day by myself.That night I went to bed and I got absolutely butchered by mosquitoes. Mosquitoes love tofeast on me, and when I was a kid it was bad. They would destroy me at night. I would wake upcovered with bites and feel ill to my stomach and itchy all over. Which was exactly whathappened this particular Sunday morning. Covered with mosquito bites, my stomach bloatedwith custard and jelly, I could barely get out of bed. I felt like I was going to vomit. Then mymom walked in.“Get dressed,” she said. “We’re going to church.”“I don’t feel well.”“That’s why we’re going to church. That’s where Jesus is going to heal you.”“Eh, I’m not sure that’s how it works.”My mom and I had different ideas about how Jesus worked. She believed that you pray toJesus and then Jesus pitches up and does the thing that you need. My views on Jesus weremore reality-based.“Why don’t I take medicine,” I said, “and then pray to Jesus to thank him for giving us thedoctors who invented medicine, because medicine is what makes you feel better, not Jesus.”“You don’t need medicine if you have Jesus. Jesus will heal you. Pray to Jesus.”“But is medicine not a blessing from Jesus? And if Jesus gives us medicine and we do nottake the medicine, are we not denying the grace that he has given us?”Like all of our debates about Jesus, this conversation went nowhere.“Trevor,” she said, “if you don’t go to church you’re going to get worse. You’re lucky yougot sick on Sunday, because now we’re going to church and you can pray to Jesus and Jesus isgoing to heal you.”“That sounds nice, but why don’t I just stay home?”“No. Get dressed. We’re going to church.”

MY MOTHER’S LIFEOnce I had my hair cornrowed for the matric dance, I started getting attentionfrom girls for the first time. I actually went on dates. At times I thought that it wasbecause I looked better. At other times I thought it was because girls liked the factthat I was going through as much pain as they did to look good. Either way, once Ifound success, I wasn’t going to mess with the formula. I kept going back to thesalon every week, spending hours at a time getting my hair straightened andcornrowed. My mom would just roll her eyes. “I could never date a man whospends more time on his hair than I do,” she’d say.Monday through Saturday my mom worked in her office and puttered aroundher garden dressed like a homeless person. Then Sunday morning for church she’ddo her hair and put on a nice dress and some high heels and she looked like amillion bucks. Once she was all done up, she couldn’t resist teasing me, throwinglittle verbal jabs the way we’d always do with each other.“Now who’s the best-looking person in the family, eh? I hope you enjoyedyour week of being the pretty one, ’cause the queen is back, baby. You spent fourhours at the salon to look like that. I just took a shower.”She was just having fun with me; no son wants to talk about how hot his momis. Because, truth be told, she was beautiful. Beautiful on the outside, beautiful onthe inside. She had a self-confidence about her that I never possessed. Even whenshe was working in the garden, dressed in overalls and covered in mud, you couldsee how attractive she was.—I can only assume that my mother broke more than a few hearts in her day, butfrom the time I was born, there were only two men in her life, my father and mystepfather. Right around the corner from my father’s house in Yeoville, there was agarage called Mighty Mechanics. Our Volkswagen was always breaking down, andmy mom would take it there to get it repaired. We met this really cool guy there,Abel, one of the auto mechanics. I’d see him when we went to fetch the car. Thecar broke down a lot, so we were there a lot. Eventually it felt like we were thereeven when there was nothing wrong with the vehicle. I was six, maybe seven. Ididn’t understand everything that was happening. I just knew that suddenly thisguy was around. He was tall, lanky and lean but strong. He had these long arms

and big hands. He could lift car engines and gearboxes. He was handsome, but hewasn’t good-looking. My mom liked that about him; she used to say there’s a typeof ugly that women find attractive. She called him Abie. He called her Mbuyi,short for Nombuyiselo.I liked him, too. Abie was charming and hilarious and had an easy, gracioussmile. He loved helping people, too, especially anyone in distress. If someone’s carbroke down on the freeway, he pulled over to see what he could do. If someoneyelled “Stop, thief!” he was the guy who gave chase. The old lady next door neededhelp moving boxes? He’s that guy. He liked to be liked by the world, which madehis abuse even harder to deal with. Because if you think someone is a monster andthe whole world says he’s a saint, you begin to think that you’re the bad person. Itmust be my fault this is happening is the only conclusion you can draw, becausewhy are you the only one receiving his wrath?Abel was always cool with me. He wasn’t trying to be my dad, and my dad wasstill in my life, so I wasn’t looking for anyone to replace him. That’s mom’s coolfriend is how I thought of him. He started coming out to stay with us in EdenPark. Some nights he’d want us to crash with him at his converted garage flat inOrange Grove, which we did. Then I burned down the white people’s house, andthat was the end of that. From then on we lived together in Eden Park.One night my mom and I were at a prayer meeting and she took me aside.“Hey,” she said. “I want to tell you something. Abel and I are going to getmarried.”Instinctively, without even thinking, I said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”I wasn’t upset or anything. I just had a sense about the guy, an intuition. I’dfelt it even before the mulberry tree. That night hadn’t changed my feelings towardAbel; it had only shown me, in flesh and blood, what he was capable of.“I understand that it’s hard,” she said. “I understand that you don’t want anew dad.”“No,” I said. “It’s not that. I like Abel. I like him a lot. But you shouldn’t marryhim.” I didn’t know the word “sinister” then, but if I had I probably would haveused it. “There’s just something not right about him. I don’t trust him. I don’tthink he’s a good person.”I’d always been fine with my mom dating this guy, but I’d never consideredthe possibility of him becoming a permanent addition to our family. I enjoyedbeing with Abel the same way I enjoyed playing with a tiger cub the first time Iwent to a tiger sanctuary: I liked it, I had fun with it, but I never thought aboutbringing it home.If there was any doubt about Abel, the truth was right there in front of us allalong, in his name. He was Abel, the good brother, the good son, a name straightout of the Bible. And he lived up to it as well. He was the firstborn, dutiful, took

care of his mother, took care of his siblings. He was the pride of his family.But Abel was his English name. His Tsonga name was Ngisaveni. It means“Be afraid.”—Mom and Abel got married. There was no ceremony, no exchange of rings. Theywent and signed the papers and that was it. A year or so later, my baby brother,Andrew, was born. I only vaguely remember my mom being gone for a few days,and when she got back there was now this thing in the house that cried and shatand got fed, but when you’re nine years older than your sibling, their arrivaldoesn’t change much for you. I wasn’t changing diapers; I was out playing arcadegames at the shop, running around the neighborhood.The main thing that marked Andrew’s birth for me was our first trip to meetAbel’s family during the Christmas holidays. They lived in Tzaneen, a town inGazankulu, what had been the Tsonga homeland under apartheid. Tzaneen has atropical climate, hot and humid. The white farms nearby grow some of the mostamazing fruit—mangoes, lychees, the most beautiful bananas you’ve ever seen inyour life. That’s where all the fruit we export to Europe comes from. But on theblack land twenty minutes down the road, the soil has been decimated by years ofoverfarming and overgrazing. Abel’s mother and his sisters were all traditional,stay-at-home moms, and Abel and his younger brother, who was a policeman,supported the family. They were all very kind and generous and accepted us aspart of the family right away.Tsonga culture, I learned, is extremely patriarchal. We’re talking about aworld where women must bow when they greet a man. Men and women havelimited social interactions. The men kill the animals, and the women cook thefood. Men are not even allowed in the kitchen. As a nine-year-old boy, I thoughtthis was fantastic. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. At home my mom was forevermaking me do chores—wash the dishes, sweep the house—but when she tried todo that in Tzaneen, the women wouldn’t allow it.“Trevor, make your bed,” my mom would say.“No, no, no, no,” Abel’s mother would protest. “Trevor must go outside andplay.”I was made to run off and have fun while my girl step-cousins had to clean thehouse and help the women cook. I was in heaven.My mother loathed every moment of being there. For Abel, a firstborn sonwho was bringing home his own firstborn son, this trip was a huge deal. In thehomelands, the firstborn son almost becomes the father/husband by defaultbecause the dad is off working in the city. The firstborn son is the man of thehouse. He raises his siblings. His mom treats him with a certain level of respect asthe dad’s surrogate. Since this was Abel’s big homecoming with Andrew, he

expected my mother to play her traditional role, too. But she refused.The women in Tzaneen had a multitude of jobs during the day. They preparedbreakfast, prepared tea, prepared lunch, did the washing and the cleaning. Themen had been working all year in the city to support the family, so this was theirvacation, more or less. They were at leisure, waited on by the women. They mightslaughter a goat or something, do whatever manly tasks needed to be done, butthen they would go to an area that was only for men and hang out and drink whilethe women cooked and cleaned. But my mom had been working in the city allyear, too, and Patricia Noah didn’t stay in anyone’s kitchen. She was a free-roaming spirit. She insisted on walking to the village, going where the men hungout, talking to the men as equals.The whole tradition of women bowing to the men, my mom found thatabsurd. But she didn’t refuse to do it. She overdid it. She made a mockery of it.The other women would bow before men with this polite little curtsy. My momwould go down and cower, groveling in the dirt like she was worshipping a deity,and she’d stay down there for a long time, like a really long time, long enough tomake everyone very uncomfortable. That was my mom. Don’t fight the system.Mock the system. To Abel, it looked like his wife didn’t respect him. Every otherman had some docile girl from the village, and here he’d come with this modernwoman, a Xhosa woman no less, a culture whose women were thought of asparticularly loudmouthed and promiscuous. The two of them fought and bickeredthe whole time, and after that first trip my mother refused to go back.Up to that point I’d lived my whole life in a world run by women, but after mymom and Abel were married, and especially after Andrew was born, I watchedhim try to assert himself and impose his ideas of what he thought his familyshould be. One thing that became clear early on was that those ideas did notinclude me. I was a reminder that my mom had lived a life before him. I didn’teven share his color. His family was him, my mom, and the new baby. My familywas my mom and me. I actually appreciated that about him. Sometimes he wasmy buddy, sometimes not, but he never pretended our relationship was anythingother than what it was. We’d joke around and laugh together. We’d watch TVtogether. He’d slip me pocket money now and again after my mother said I’d hadenough. But he never gave me a birthday present or a Christmas present. He nevergave me the affection of a father. I was never his son.Abel’s presence in the house brought with it new rules. One of the first thingshe did was kick Fufi and Panther out of the house.“No dogs in the house.”“But we’ve always had the dogs in the house.”“Not anymore. In an African home, dogs sleep outside. People sleep inside.”Putting the dogs in the yard was Abel’s way of saying, “We’re going to dothings around here the way they’re supposed to be done.” When they were just

dating, my mother was still the free spirit, doing what she wanted, going whereshe wanted. Slowly, those things got reined in. I could feel that he was trying torein in our independence. He even got upset about church. “You cannot be atchurch the whole day,” he’d say. “My wife is gone all day, and what will peoplesay? ‘Why is his wife not around? Where is she? Who goes to church for the wholeday?’ No, no, no. This brings disrespect to me.”He tried to stop her from spending so much time at church, and one of themost effective tools he used was to stop fixing my mother’s car. It would breakdown, and he’d purposefully let it sit. My mom couldn’t afford another car, andshe couldn’t get the car fixed somewhere else. You’re married to a mechanic andyou’re going to get your car fixed by another mechanic? That’s worse thancheating. So Abel became our only transport, and he would refuse to take usplaces. Ever defiant, my mother would take minibuses to get to church.Losing the car also meant losing access to my dad. We had to ask Abel forrides into town, and he didn’t like what they were for. It was an insult to hismanhood.“We need to go to Yeoville.”“Why are you going to Yeoville?”“To see Trevor’s dad.”“What? No, no. How can I take my wife and her child and drop you off there?You’re insulting me. What do I tell my friends? What do I tell my family? My wifeis at another man’s house? The man who made that child with her? No, no, no.”I saw my father less and less. Not long after, he moved down to Cape Town.Abel wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional wife. For a long time Iwondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she wasthe opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there wereplenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way mymother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient,but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independentwomen. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman whois free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”—When we first met Abel, he smoked a lot of weed. He drank, too, but it was mostlyweed. Looking back, I almost miss his pothead days because the weed mellowedhim out. He’d smoke, chill, watch TV, and fall asleep. I think subconsciously it wassomething he knew he needed to do to take the edge off his anger. He stoppedsmoking after he and my mom got married. She made him stop for religiousreasons—the body is a temple and so on. But what none of us saw coming was thatwhen he stopped smoking weed he just replaced it with alcohol. He starteddrinking more and more. He never came home from work sober. An average day

was a six-pack of beer after work. Weeknights he’d have a buzz on. Some Fridaysand Saturdays he just didn’t come home.When Abel drank, his eyes would go red, bloodshot. That was the clue Ilearned to read. I always thought of Abel as a cobra: calm, perfectly still, thenexplosive. There was no ranting and raving, no clenched fists. He’d be very quiet,and then out of nowhere the violence would come. The eyes were my only clue tostay away. His eyes were everything. They were the eyes of the Devil.Late one night we woke up to a house filled with smoke. Abel hadn’t comehome by the time we’d gone to bed, and I’d fallen asleep in my mother’s room withher and Andrew, who was still a baby. I jerked awake to her shaking me andscreaming. “Trevor! Trevor!” There was smoke everywhere. We thought the housewas burning down.My mom ran down the hallway to the kitchen, where she discovered thekitchen on fire. Abel had driven home drunk, blind drunk, drunker than we’d everseen him before. He’d been hungry, tried to heat up some food on the stove, andpassed out on the couch while it was cooking. The pot had burned itself out andburned up the kitchen wall behind the stove, and smoke was billowingeverywhere. She turned off the stove and opened the doors and the windows to tryto air the place out. Then she went over to the couch and woke him up and startedberating him for nearly burning the house down. He was too drunk to care.She came back into the bedroom, picked up the phone, and called mygrandmother. She started going on and on about Abel and his drinking. “Thisman, he’s going to kill us one day. He almost burnt the house down…”Abel walked into the bedroom, very calm, very quiet. His eyes were blood red,his eyelids heavy. He put his finger on the cradle and hung up the call. My momlost it.“How dare you! Don’t you hang up my phone call! What do you think you’redoing?!”“You don’t tell people what’s happening in this house,” he said.“Oh, please! You’re worried about what the world is thinking? Worry aboutthis world! Worry about what your family is thinking!”Abel towered over my mother. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t get angry.“Mbuyi,” he said softly, “you don’t respect me.”“Respect?! You almost burned down our house. Respect? Oh, please! Earnyour respect! You want me to respect you as a man, then act like a man! Drinkingyour money in the streets, and where are your child’s diapers?! Respect?! Earnyour respect—”“Mbuyi—”“You’re not a man; you’re a child—”

“Mbuyi—”“I can’t have a child for a husband—”“Mbuyi—”“I’ve got my own children to raise—”“Mbuyi, shut up—”“A man who comes home drunk—”“Mbuyi, shut up—”“And burns down the house with his children—”“Mbuyi, shut up—”“And you call yourself a father—”Then out of nowhere, like a clap of thunder when there were no clouds,crack!, he smacked her across the face. She ricocheted off the wall and collapsedlike a ton of bricks. I’d never seen anything like it. She went down and stayeddown for a good thirty seconds. Andrew started screaming. I don’t remembergoing to pick him up, but I clearly remember holding him at some point. My mompulled herself up and struggled back to her feet and launched right back into him.She’d clearly been knocked for a loop, but she was trying to act more with-it thanshe was. I could see the disbelief in her face. This had never happened to herbefore in her life. She got right back in his face and started shouting at him.“Did you just hit me?”The whole time, in my head, I kept thinking the same thing Abel was saying.Shut up, Mom. Shut up. You’re going to make it worse. Because I knew, as thereceiver of many beatings, the one thing that doesn’t help is talking back. But shewouldn’t stay quiet.“Did you just hit me?”“Mbuyi, I told you—”“No man has ever! Don’t think you can control me when you can’t evencontrol—”Crack! He hit her again. She stumbled back but this time didn’t fall. Shescrambled, grabbed me, and grabbed Andrew.“Let’s go. We’re leaving.”We ran out of the house and up the road. It was the dead of night, coldoutside. I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and sweatpants. We walked to theEden Park police station, over a kilometer away. My mom marched us in, andthere were two cops on duty at the front desk.“I’m here to lay a charge,” she said.

“What are you here to lay a charge about?”“I’m here to lay a charge against the man who hit me.”To this day I’ll never forget the patronizing, condescending way they spoke toher.“Calm down, lady. Calm down. Who hit you?”“My husband.”“Your husband? What did you do? Did you make him angry?”“Did I…what? No. He hit me. I’m here to lay a charge against—”“No, no. Ma’am. Why do you wanna make a case, eh? You sure you want to dothis? Go home and talk to your husband. You do know once you lay charges youcan’t take them back? He’ll have a criminal record. His life will never be the same.Do you really want your husband going to jail?”My mom kept insisting that they take a statement and open a case, and theyactually refused—they refused to write up a charge sheet.“This is a family thing,” they said. “You don’t want to involve the police.Maybe you want to think it over and come back in the morning.”Mom started yelling at them, demanding to see the station commander, andright then Abel walked into the station. He’d driven down. He’d sobered up a bit,but he was still drunk, driving into a police station. That didn’t matter. He walkedover to the cops, and the station turned into a boys’ club. Like they were a bunchof old pals.“Hey, guys,” he said. “You know how it is. You know how women can be. I justgot a little angry, that’s all.”“It’s okay, man. We know. It happens. Don’t worry.”I had never seen anything like it. I was nine years old, and I still thought ofthe police as the good guys. You get in trouble, you call the police, and thoseflashing red-and-blue lights are going to come and save you. But I rememberstanding there watching my mom, flabbergasted, horrified that these copswouldn’t help her. That’s when I realized the police were not who I thought theywere. They were men first, and police second.We left the station. My mother took me and Andrew, and we went out to staywith my grandmother in Soweto for a while. A few weeks later, Abel drove overand apologized. Abel was always sincere and heartfelt with his apologies: Hedidn’t mean it. He knows he was wrong. He’ll never do it again. My grandmotherconvinced my mom that she should give Abel a second chance. Her argument wasbasically, “All men do it.” My grandfather, Temperance, had hit her. Leaving Abelwas no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again, and at least Abel was willing toapologize. So my mom decided to give him another chance. We drove back to

Eden Park together, and for years, nothing—for years Abel didn’t lay a finger onher. Or me. Everything went back to the way it was.—Abel was an amazing mechanic, probably one of the best around at the time. He’dbeen to technical college, graduated first in his class. He’d had job offers fromBMW and Mercedes. His business thrived on referrals. People would bring theircars from all over the city for him to fix because he could work miracles on them.My mom truly believed in him. She thought she could raise him up, help himmake good on his potential, not merely as a mechanic but as the owner of his ownworkshop.As headstrong and independent as my mom is, she remains the woman whogives back. She gives and gives and gives; that is her nature. She refused to besubservient to Abel at home, but she did want him to succeed as a man. If shecould make their marriage a true marriage of equals, she was willing to pourherself into it completely, the same way she poured herself into her children. Atsome point, Abel’s boss decided to sell Mighty Mechanics and retire. My mom hadsome money saved, and she helped Abel buy it. They moved the workshop fromYeoville to the industrial area of Wynberg, just west of Alex, and MightyMechanics became the new family business.When you first go into business there are so many things nobody tells you.That’s especially true when you’re two young black people, a secretary and amechanic, coming out of a time when blacks had never been allowed to ownbusinesses at all. One of the things nobody tells you is that when you buy abusiness you buy its debt. After my mom and Abel opened up the books on MightyMechanics and came to a full realization of what they’d bought, they saw howmuch trouble the company was already in.The garage gradually took over our lives. I’d get out of school and walk thefive kilometers from Maryvale to the workshop. I’d sit for hours and try to do myhomework with the machines and repairs going on around me. Inevitably Abelwould get behind schedule on a car, and since he was our ride, we’d have to waitfor him to finish before we could go home. It started out as “We’re running late.Go nap in a car, and we’ll tell you when we’re leaving.” I’d crawl in the backseat ofsome sedan, they’d wake me up at midnight, and we’d drive all the way back out toEden Park and crash. Then pretty soon it was “We’re running late. Go sleep in acar, and we’ll wake you for school in the morning.” We started sleeping at thegarage. At first it was one or two nights a week, then three or four. Then my momsold the house and put that money into the business as well. She went all in. Shegave up everything for him.From that point on we lived in the garage. It was a warehouse, basically, andnot the fancy, romantic sort of warehouse hipsters might one day turn into lofts.No, no. It was a cold, empty space. Gray concrete floors stained with oil andgrease, old junk cars and car parts everywhere. Near the front, next to the roller

door that opened onto the street, there was a tiny office built out of drywall fordoing paperwork and such. In the back was a kitchenette, just a sink, a portablehot plate, and some cabinets. To bathe, there was only an open wash basin, like ajanitor’s sink, with a showerhead rigged up above.Abel and my mom slept with Andrew in the office on a thin mattress they’droll out on the floor. I slept in the cars. I got really good at sleeping in cars. I knowall the best cars to sleep in. The worst were the cheap ones, Volkswagens, low-endJapanese sedans. The seats barely reclined, no headrests, cheap fake-leatherupholstery. I’d spend half the night trying not to slide off the seat. I’d wake up withsore knees because I couldn’t stretch out and extend my legs. German cars werewonderful, especially Mercedes. Big, plush leather seats, like couches. They werecold when you first climbed in, but they were well insulated and warmed up nicely.All I needed was my school blazer to curl up under, and I could get really cozyinside a Mercedes. But the best, hands-down, were American cars. I used to prayfor a customer to come in with a big Buick with bench seats. If I saw one of those,I’d be like, Yes! It was rare for American cars to come in, but when they did, boy,was I in heaven.Since Mighty Mechanics was now a family business, and I was family, I alsohad to work. There was no more time for play. There wasn’t even time forhomework. I’d walk home, the school uniform would come off, the overalls wouldgo on, and I’d get under the hood of some sedan. I got to a point where I could doa basic service on a car by myself, and often I did. Abel would say, “That Honda.Minor service.” And I’d get under the hood. Day in and day out. Points, plugs,condensers, oil filters, air filters. Install new seats, change tires, swap headlights,fix taillights. Go to the parts shop, buy the parts, back to the workshop. Elevenyears old, and that was my life. I was falling behind in school. I wasn’t gettinganything done. My teachers used to come down on me.“Why aren’t you doing your homework?”“I can’t do my homework. I have work, at home.”We worked and worked and worked, but no matter how many hours we putin, the business kept losing money. We lost everything. We couldn’t even affordreal food. There was one month I’ll never forget, the worst month of my life. Wewere so broke that for weeks we ate nothing but bowls of marogo, a kind of wildspinach, cooked with caterpillars. Mopane worms, they’re called. Mopane wormsare literally the cheapest thing that only the poorest of poor people eat. I grew uppoor, but there’s poor and then there’s “Wait, I’m eating worms.” Mopane wormsare the sort of thing where even people in Soweto would be like, “Eh…no.” They’rethese spiny, brightly colored caterpillars the size of your finger. They’re nothinglike escargot, where someone took a snail and gave it a fancy name. They’refucking worms. They have black spines that prick the roof of your mouth as you’reeating them. When you bite into a mopane worm, it’s not uncommon for itsyellow-green excrement to squirt into your mouth.

For a while I sort of enjoyed the caterpillars. It was like a food adventure, butthen over the course of weeks, eating them every day, day after day, I couldn’t takeit anymore. I’ll never forget the day I bit a mopane worm in half and that yellow-green ooze came out and I thought, “I’m eating caterpillar shit.” Instantly I wantedto throw up. I snapped and ran to my mom crying. “I don’t want to eat caterpillarsanymore!” That night she scraped some money together and bought us chicken.As poor as we’d been in the past, we’d never been without food.That was the period of my life I hated the most—work all night, sleep in somecar, wake up, wash up in a janitor’s sink, brush my teeth in a little metal basin,brush my hair in the rearview mirror of a Toyota, then try to get dressed withoutgetting oil and grease all over my school clothes so the kids at school won’t know Ilive in a garage. Oh, I hated it so much. I hated cars. I hated sleeping in cars. Ihated working on cars. I hated getting my hands dirty. I hated eating worms. Ihated it all.I didn’t hate my mom, or even Abel, funnily enough. Because I saw how hardeveryone was working. At first I didn’t know about the mistakes being made onthe business level that were making it hard, so it just felt like a hard situation. Buteventually I started to see why the business was hemorrhaging money. I used to goaround and buy auto parts for Abel, and I learned that he was buying his parts oncredit. The vendors were charging him a crazy markup. The debt was crippling thecompany, and instead of paying off the debt he was drinking what little cash hemade. Brilliant mechanic, horrible businessman.At a certain point, in order to try to save the garage, my mother quit her job atICI and stepped in to help him run the workshop. She brought her office skills tothe garage full-time and started keeping the books, making the schedule,balancing the accounts. And it was going well, until Abel started to feel like shewas running his business. People started commenting on it as well. Clients weregetting their cars on time, vendors were getting paid on time, and they would say,“Hey, Abie, this workshop is going so much better now that your wife has takenover.” That didn’t help.We lived in the workshop for close to a year, and then my mom had hadenough. She was willing to help him, but not if he was going to drink all theprofits. She had always been independent, self-sufficient, but she’d lost that partof herself at the mercy of someone else’s failed dream. At a certain point she said,“I can’t do this anymore. I’m out of this. I’m done.” She went out and got a job as asecretary with a real-estate developer, and somehow, between that and borrowingagainst whatever equity was left in Abel’s workshop, she was able to get us thehouse in Highlands North. We moved, the workshop was seized by Abel’screditors, and that was the end of that.—Growing up I suffered no shortage of my mother’s old school, Old Testamentdiscipline. She spared no rod and spoiled no child. With Andrew, she was

different. He got spankings at first, but they tapered off and eventually went away.When I asked her why I got beatings and Andrew didn’t, she made a joke about itlike she does with everything. “I beat you like that because you could take it,” shesaid. “I can’t hit your little brother the same way because he’s a skinny little stick.He’ll break. But you, God gave you that ass for whipping.” Even though she waskidding, I could tell that the reason she didn’t beat Andrew was because she’d hada genuine change of heart on the matter. It was a lesson she’d learned, oddlyenough, from me.I grew up in a world of violence, but I myself was never violent at all. Yes, Iplayed pranks and set fires and broke windows, but I never attacked people. Inever hit anyone. I was never angry. I just didn’t see myself that way. My motherhad exposed me to a different world than the one she grew up in. She bought methe books she never got to read. She took me to the schools that she never got togo to. I immersed myself in those worlds and I came back looking at the world adifferent way. I saw that not all families are violent. I saw the futility of violence,the cycle that just repeats itself, the damage that’s inflicted on people that they inturn inflict on others.I saw, more than anything, that relationships are not sustained by violencebut by love. Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new worldfor them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the thingsI learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her.After that, she never raised her hand to her children again. Unfortunately, by thetime she stopped, Abel had started.In all the times I received beatings from my mom, I was never scared of her. Ididn’t like it, certainly. When she said, “I hit you out of love,” I didn’t necessarilyagree with her thinking. But I understood that it was discipline and it was beingdone for a purpose. The first time Abel hit me I felt something I had never feltbefore. I felt terror.I was in grade six, my last year at Maryvale. We’d moved to Highlands North,and I’d gotten in trouble at school for forging my mom’s signature on somedocument; there was some activity I didn’t want to participate in, so I’d signed therelease in her name to get out of it. The school called my mom, and she asked meabout it when I got home that afternoon. I was certain she was going to punish me,but this turned out to be one of those times when she didn’t care. She said I shouldhave just asked her; she would have signed the form anyway. Then Abel, who’dbeen sitting in the kitchen with us, watching the whole thing, said, “Hey, can I talkto you for a second?” Then he took me into this tiny room, a walk-in pantry off thekitchen, and he closed the door behind us.He was standing between me and the door, but I didn’t think anything of it. Itdidn’t occur to me to be scared. Abel had never tried to discipline me before. He’dnever even given me a lecture. It was always “Mbuyi, your son did this,” and thenmy mother would handle it. And this was the middle of the afternoon. He was

completely sober, which made what happened next all the more terrifying.“Why did you forge your mother’s signature?” he said.I started making up some excuse. “Oh, I, uh, forgot to bring the form home—”“Don’t lie to me. Why did you forge your mom’s signature?”I started stammering out more bullshit, oblivious to what was coming, andthen out of nowhere it came.The first blow hit me in the ribs. My mind flashed: It’s a trap! I’d never beenin a fight before, had never learned how to fight, but I had this instinct that toldme to get in close. I had seen what those long arms could do. I’d seen him takedown my mom, but more important, I’d seen him take down grown men. Abelnever hit people with a punch; I never saw him punch another person with aclosed fist. But he had this ability to hit a grown man across his face with an openhand and they’d crumple. He was that strong. I looked at his arms and I knew,Don’t be on the other end of those things. I ducked in close and he kept hitting andhitting, but I was in too tight for him to land any solid blows. Then he caught onand he stopped hitting and started trying to grapple and wrestle me. He did thisthing where he grabbed the skin on my arms and pinched it between his thumband forefinger and twisted hard. Jesus, that hurt.It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I had never been that scaredbefore, ever. Because there was no purpose to it—that’s what made it so terrifying.It wasn’t discipline. Nothing about it was coming from a place of love. It didn’t feellike something that would end with me learning a lesson about forging my mom’ssignature. It felt like something that would end when he wanted it to end, whenhis rage was spent. It felt like there was something inside him that wanted todestroy me.Abel was much bigger and stronger than me, but being in a confined spacewas to my advantage because he didn’t have the room to maneuver. As hegrappled and punched I somehow managed to twist and wriggle my way aroundhim and slip out the door. I was quick, but Abel was quick as well. He chased me. Iran out of the house and jumped over the gate, and I ran and I ran and I ran. Thelast time I turned around he was rounding the gate, coming out of the yard afterme. Until I turned twenty-five years old, I had a recurring nightmare of the lookon his face as he came around that corner.The moment I saw him I put my head down and ran. I ran like the Devil waschasing me. Abel was bigger and faster, but this was my neighborhood. Youcouldn’t catch me in my neighborhood. I knew every alley and every street, everywall to climb over, every fence to slip through. I was ducking through traffic,cutting through yards. I have no idea when he gave up because I never lookedback. I ran and ran and ran, as far as my legs would carry me. I was in Bramley,three neighborhoods away, before I stopped. I found a hiding place in somebushes and crawled inside and huddled there for what felt like hours.

You don’t have to teach me a lesson twice. From that day until the day I lefthome, I lived like a mouse in that house. If Abel was in a room, I was out of theroom. If he was in one corner, I was in the other corner. If he walked into a room,I would get up and act like I was going to the kitchen, then when I reentered theroom, I would make sure I was close to the exit. He could be in the happiest,friendliest mood. Didn’t matter. Never again did I let him come between me and adoor. Maybe a couple of times after that I was sloppy and he’d land a punch or akick before I could get away, but I never trusted him again, not for a moment.It was different for Andrew. Andrew was Abel’s son, flesh of his flesh, blood ofhis blood. Despite being nine years younger than me, Andrew was really the eldestson in that house, Abel’s firstborn, and that accorded him a respect that I and evenmy mother never enjoyed. And Andrew had nothing but love for that man, despitehis shortcomings. Because of that love, I think, out of all of us, Andrew was theonly one who wasn’t afraid. He was the lion tamer, only he’d been raised by thelion—he couldn’t love the beast any less despite knowing what it was capable of.For me, the first glint of anger or madness from Abel and I was gone. Andrewwould stay and try to talk Abel down. He’d even get between Abel and Mom. Iremember one night when Abel threw a bottle of Jack Daniel’s at Andrew’s head.It just missed him and exploded on the wall. Which is to say that Andrew stayedlong enough to get the bottle thrown at him. I wouldn’t have stuck around longenough for Abel to get a bead on me.—When Mighty Mechanics went under, Abel had to get his cars out. Someone wastaking over the property; there were liens against his assets. It was a mess. That’swhen he started running his workshop out of our yard. It’s also when my motherdivorced him.In African culture there’s legal marriage and traditional marriage. Justbecause you divorce someone legally doesn’t mean they are no longer your spouse.Once Abel’s debts and his terrible business decisions started impacting mymother’s credit and her ability to support her sons, she wanted out. “I don’t havedebts,” she said. “I don’t have bad credit. I’m not doing these things with you.” Wewere still a family and they were still traditionally married, but she divorced himin order to separate their financial affairs. She also took her name back.Because Abel had started running an unlicensed business in a residentialarea, one of the neighbors filed a petition to get rid of us. My mom applied for alicense to be able to operate a business on the property. The workshop stayed, butAbel kept running it into the ground, drinking his money. At the same time, mymother started moving up at the real-estate company she worked for, taking onmore responsibilities and earning a better salary. His workshop became like a sidehobby almost. He was supposed to pay for Andrew’s school fees and groceries, buthe started falling behind even on that, and soon my mom was paying foreverything. She paid the electricity. She paid the mortgage. He literally

contributed nothing.That was the turning point. When my mother started making more moneyand getting her independence back—that’s when we saw the dragon emerge. Thedrinking got worse. He grew more and more violent. It wasn’t long after comingfor me in the pantry that Abel hit my mom for the second time. I can’t recall thedetails of it, because now it’s muddled with all the other times that came after it. Ido remember that the police were called. They came out to the house this time, butagain it was like a boys’ club. “Hey, guys. These women, you know how they are.”No report was made. No charges were filed.Whenever he’d hit her or come after me, my mom would find me cryingafterward and take me aside. She’d give me the same talk every time.“Pray for Abel,” she’d say. “Because he doesn’t hate us. He hates himself.”To a kid this makes no sense. “Well, if he hates himself,” I’d say, “why doesn’the kick himself?”Abel was one of those drinkers where once he was gone you’d look into hiseyes and you didn’t even see the same person. I remember one night he camehome fuckdrunk, stumbling through the house. He stumbled into my room,muttering to himself, and I woke up to see him whip out his dick and start pissingon the floor. He thought he was in the bathroom. That’s how drunk he would get—he wouldn’t know which room in the house he was in. There were so many nightshe would stumble into my room thinking it was his and kick me out of bed andpass out. I’d yell at him, but it was like talking to a zombie. I’d go sleep on thecouch.He’d get wasted with his crew in the backyard every evening after work, andmany nights he’d end up fighting with one of them. Someone would say somethingAbel didn’t like, and he’d beat the shit out of him. The guy wouldn’t show up forwork Tuesday or Wednesday, but then by Thursday he’d be back because heneeded the job. Every few weeks it was the same story, like clockwork.Abel kicked the dogs, too. Fufi, mostly. Panther was smart enough to stayaway, but dumb, lovable Fufi was forever trying to be Abel’s friend. She’d cross hispath or be in his way when he’d had a few, and he’d give her the boot. After thatshe’d go and hide somewhere for a while. Fufi getting kicked was always thewarning sign that shit was about to go down. The dogs and the workers in the yardoften got the first taste of his anger, and that would let the rest of us know to lielow. I’d usually go find Fufi wherever she was hiding and be with her.The strange thing was that when Fufi got kicked she never yelped or cried.When the vet diagnosed her as deaf, he also found out she had some conditionwhere she didn’t have a fully developed sense of touch. She didn’t feel pain. Whichwas why she would always start over with Abel like it was a new day. He’d kickher, she’d hide, then she’d be right back the next morning, wagging her tail. “Hey.I’m here. I’ll give you another chance.”

And he always got the second chance. The Abel who was likable and charmingnever went away. He had a drinking problem, but he was a nice guy. We had afamily. Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you canlove a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling. You wantto live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them orlove them, but that’s not how people are.There was an undercurrent of terror that ran through the house, but theactual beatings themselves were not that frequent. I think if they had been, thesituation would have ended sooner. Ironically, the good times in between werewhat allowed it to drag out and escalate as far as it did. He hit my mom once, thenthe next time was three years later, and it was just a little bit worse. Then it wastwo years later, and it was just a little bit worse. Then it was a year later, and it wasjust a little bit worse. It was sporadic enough to where you’d think it wouldn’thappen again, but it was frequent enough that you never forgot it was possible.There was a rhythm to it. I remember one time, after one terrible incident, nobodyspoke to him for over a month. No words, no eye contact, no conversations,nothing. We moved through the house as strangers, at different times. Completesilent treatment. Then one morning you’re in the kitchen and there’s a nod. “Hey.”“Hey.” Then a week later it’s “Did you see the thing on the news?” “Yeah.” Thenthe next week there’s a joke and a laugh. Slowly, slowly, life goes back to how itwas. Six months, a year later, you do it all again.—One afternoon I came home from Sandringham and my mom was very upset andworked up.“This man is unbelievable,” she said.“What happened?”“He bought a gun.”“What? A gun? What do you mean, ‘He bought a gun’?”A gun was such a ridiculous thing in my world. In my mind, only cops andcriminals had guns. Abel had gone out and bought a 9mm Parabellum Smith &Wesson. Sleek and black, menacing. It didn’t look cool like guns in movies. Itlooked like it killed things.“Why did he buy a gun?” I asked.“I don’t know.”She said she’d confronted him about it, and he’d gone off on some nonsenseabout the world needing to learn to respect him.“He thinks he’s the policeman of the world,” she said. “And that’s the problemwith the world. We have people who cannot police themselves, so they want topolice everyone else around them.”

Not long after that, I moved out. The atmosphere had become toxic for me. I’dreached the point where I was as big as Abel. Big enough to punch back. A fatherdoes not fear retribution from his son, but I was not his son. He knew that. Theanalogy my mom used was that there were now two male lions in the house.“Every time he looks at you he sees your father,” she’d say. “You’re a constantreminder of another man. He hates you, and you need to leave. You need to leavebefore you become like him.”It was also just time for me to go. Regardless of Abel, our plan had alwaysbeen for me to move out after school. My mother never wanted me to be like myuncle, one of those men, unemployed and still living at home with his mother. Shehelped me get my flat, and I moved out. The flat was only ten minutes away fromthe house, so I was always around to drop in to help with errands or have dinneronce in a while. But, most important, whatever was going on with Abel, I didn’thave to be involved.At some point my mom moved to a separate bedroom in the house, and fromthen on they were married in name only, not even cohabitating but coexisting.That state of affairs lasted a year, maybe two. Andrew had turned nine, and in myworld I was counting down until he turned eighteen, thinking that would finallyfree my mom from this abusive man. Then one afternoon my mom called andasked me to come by the house. A few hours later, I popped by.“Trevor,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”“Sorry, what?”“I’m pregnant.”“What?!”Good Lord, I was furious. I was so angry. She herself seemed resolute, asdetermined as ever, but with an undertone of sadness I had never seen before, likethe news had devastated her at first but she’d since reconciled herself to the realityof it.“How could you let this happen?”“Abel and I, we made up. I moved back into the bedroom. It was just onenight, and then…I became pregnant. I don’t know how.”She didn’t know. She was forty-four years old. She’d had her tubes tied afterAndrew. Even her doctor had said, “This shouldn’t be possible. We don’t knowhow this happened.”I was boiling with rage. All we had to do was wait for Andrew to grow up, andit was going to be over, and now it was like she’d re-upped on the contract.“So you’re going to have this child with this man? You’re going to stay withthis man another eighteen years? Are you crazy?”“God spoke to me, Trevor. He told me, ‘Patricia, I don’t do anything by

mistake. There is nothing I give you that you cannot handle.’ I’m pregnant for areason. I know what kind of kids I can make. I know what kind of sons I can raise.I can raise this child. I will raise this child.”Nine months later Isaac was born. She called him Isaac because in the BibleSarah gets pregnant when she’s like a hundred years old and she’s not supposed tobe having children and that’s what she names her son.Isaac’s birth pushed me even further away. I visited less and less. Then Ipopped by one afternoon and the house was in chaos, police cars out front, theaftermath of another fight.He’d hit her with a bicycle. Abel had been berating one of his workers in theyard, and my mom had tried to get between them. Abel was furious that she’dcontradicted him in front of an employee, so he picked up Andrew’s bike and hebeat her with it. Again she called the police, and the cops who showed up this timeactually knew Abel. He’d fixed their cars. They were pals. No charges were filed.Nothing happened.That time I confronted him. I was big enough now.“You can’t keep doing this,” I said. “This is not right.”He was apologetic. He always was. He didn’t puff out his chest and getdefensive or anything like that.“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t like doing these things, but you knowhow your mom is. She can talk a lot and she doesn’t listen. I feel like your momdoesn’t respect me sometimes. She came and disrespected me in front of myworkers. I can’t have these other men looking at me like I don’t know how tocontrol my wife.”After the bicycle, my mom hired contractors she knew through the real-estatebusiness to build her a separate house in the backyard, like a little servants’quarters, and she moved in there with Isaac.“This is the most insane thing I’ve ever seen,” I told her.“This is all I can do,” she said. “The police won’t help me. The governmentwon’t protect me. Only my God can protect me. But what I can do is use againsthim the one thing that he cherishes, and that is his pride. By me living outside in ashack, everyone is going to ask him, ‘Why does your wife live in a shack outsideyour house?’ He’s going to have to answer that question, and no matter what hesays, everyone will know that something is wrong with him. He loves to live for theworld. Let the world see him for who he is. He’s a saint in the streets. He’s a devilin this house. Let him be seen for who he is.”When my mom had decided to keep Isaac, I was so close to writing her off. Icouldn’t stand the pain anymore. But seeing her hit with a bicycle, living like aprisoner in her own backyard, that was the final straw for me. I was a brokenperson. I was done.

“This thing?” I told her. “This dysfunctional thing? I won’t be a part of it. Ican’t live this life with you. I refuse. You’ve made your decision. Good luck withyour life. I’m going to live mine.”She understood. She didn’t feel betrayed or abandoned at all.“Honey, I know what you’re going through,” she said. “At one point, I had todisown my family to go off and live my own life, too. I understand why you need todo the same.”So I did. I walked out. I didn’t call. I didn’t visit. Isaac came and I went, andfor the life of me I could not understand why she wouldn’t do the same: leave. Justleave. Just fucking leave.I didn’t understand what she was going through. I didn’t understanddomestic violence. I didn’t understand how adult relationships worked; I’d nevereven had a girlfriend. I didn’t understand how she could have sex with a man shehated and feared. I didn’t know how easily sex and hatred and fear can intertwine.I was angry with my mom. I hated him, but I blamed her. I saw Abel as achoice she’d made, a choice she was continuing to make. My whole life, telling mestories about growing up in the homelands, being abandoned by her parents, shehad always said, “You cannot blame anyone else for what you do. You cannotblame your past for who you are. You are responsible for you. You make your ownchoices.”She never let me see us as victims. We were victims, me and my mom,Andrew and Isaac. Victims of apartheid. Victims of abuse. But I was never allowedto think that way, and I didn’t see her life that way. Cutting my father out of ourlives to pacify Abel, that was her choice. Supporting Abel’s workshop was herchoice. Isaac was her choice. She had the money, not him. She wasn’t dependent.So in my mind, she was the one making the decision.It is so easy, from the outside, to put the blame on the woman and say, “Youjust need to leave.” It’s not like my home was the only home where there wasdomestic abuse. It’s what I grew up around. I saw it in the streets of Soweto, onTV, in movies. Where does a woman go in a society where that is the norm? Whenthe police won’t help her? When her own family won’t help her? Where does awoman go when she leaves one man who hits her and is just as likely to wind upwith another man who hits her, maybe even worse than the first? Where does awoman go when she’s single with three kids and she lives in a society that makesher a pariah for being a manless woman? Where she’s seen as a whore for doingthat? Where does she go? What does she do?But I didn’t comprehend any of that at the time. I was a boy with a boy’sunderstanding of things. I distinctly remember the last time we argued about it,too. It was sometime after the bicycle, or when she was moving into her shack inthe backyard. I was going off, begging her for the thousandth time.

“Why? Why don’t you just leave?”She shook her head. “Oh, baby. No, no, no. I can’t leave.”“Why not?”“Because if I leave he’ll kill us.”She wasn’t being dramatic. She didn’t raise her voice. She said it totally calmand matter-of-fact, and I never asked her that question again.—Eventually she did leave. What prompted her to leave, what the final breakingpoint was, I have no idea. I was gone. I was off becoming a comedian, touring thecountry, playing shows in England, hosting radio shows, hosting television shows.I’d moved in with my cousin Mlungisi and made my own life separate from hers. Icouldn’t invest myself anymore, because it would have broken me into too manypieces. But one day she bought another house in Highlands North, met someonenew, and moved on with her life. Andrew and Isaac still saw their dad, who, bythat point, was just existing in the world, still going through the same cycle ofdrinking and fighting, still living in a house paid for by his ex-wife.Years passed. Life carried on.Then one morning I was in bed around ten a.m. and my phone rang. It was ona Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because everyone else in the family had goneto church and I, quite happily, had not. The days of endlessly schlepping back andforth to church were no longer my problem, and I was lazily sleeping in. The ironyof my life is that whenever church is involved is when shit goes wrong, like gettingkidnapped by violent minibus drivers. I’d always teased my mom about that, too.“This church thing of yours, all this Jesus, what good has come of it?”I looked over at my phone. It was flashing my mom’s number, but when Ianswered, it was Andrew on the other end. He sounded perfectly calm.“Hey, Trevor, it’s Andrew.”“Hey.”“How are you?”“Good. What’s up?”“Are you busy?”“I’m sort of sleeping. Why?”“Mom’s been shot.”Okay, so there were two strange things about the call. First, why would he askme if I was busy? Let’s start there. When your mom’s been shot, the first line outof your mouth should be “Mom’s been shot.” Not “How are you?” Not “Are youbusy?” That confused me. The second weird thing was when he said, “Mom’s been

shot,” I didn’t ask, “Who shot her?” I didn’t have to. He said, “Mom’s been shot,”and my mind automatically filled in the rest: “Abel shot mom.”“Where are you now?” I said.“We’re at Linksfield Hospital.”“Okay, I’m on my way.”I jumped out of bed, ran down the corridor, and banged on Mlungisi’s door.“Dude, my mom’s been shot! She’s in the hospital.” He jumped out of bed, too,and we got in the car and raced to the hospital, which luckily was only fifteenminutes away.At that point, I was upset but not terrified. Andrew had been so calm on thephone, no crying, no panic in his voice, so I was thinking, She must be okay. Itmust not be that bad. I called him back from the car to find out more.“Andrew, what happened?”“We were on our way home from church,” he said, again totally calm. “AndDad was waiting for us at the house, and he got out of his car and startedshooting.”“But where? Where did he shoot her?”“He shot her in her leg.”“Oh, okay,” I said, relieved.“And then he shot her in the head.”When he said that, my body just let go. I remember the exact traffic light Iwas at. For a moment there was a complete vacuum of sound, and then I criedtears like I had never cried before. I collapsed in heaving sobs and moans. I criedas if every other thing I’d cried for in my life had been a waste of crying. I cried sohard that if my present crying self could go back in time and see my other cryingselves, it would slap them and say, “That shit’s not worth crying for.” My cry wasnot a cry of sadness. It was not catharsis. It wasn’t me feeling sorry for myself. Itwas an expression of raw pain that came from an inability of my body to expressthat pain in any other way, shape, or form. She was my mom. She was myteammate. It had always been me and her together, me and her against the world.When Andrew said, “shot her in the head,” I broke in two.The light changed. I couldn’t even see the road, but I drove through the tears,thinking, Just get there, just get there, just get there. We pulled up to the hospital,and I jumped out of the car. There was an outdoor sitting area by the entrance tothe emergency room. Andrew was standing there waiting for me, alone, his clothessmeared with blood. He still looked perfectly calm, completely stoic. Then themoment he looked up and saw me he broke down and started bawling. It was likehe’d been holding it together the whole morning and then everything broke looseat once and he lost it. I ran to him and hugged him and he cried and cried. His cry

was different from mine, though. My cry was one of pain and anger. His cry wasone of helplessness.I turned and ran into the emergency room. My mom was there in triage on agurney. The doctors were stabilizing her. Her whole body was soaked in blood.There was a hole in her face, a gaping wound above her lip, part of her nose gone.She was as calm and serene as I’d ever seen her. She could still open one eye,and she turned and looked up at me and saw the look of horror on my face.“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered, barely able to speak with the blood in herthroat.“It’s not okay.”“No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay. Where’s Andrew? Where’s your brother?”“He’s outside.”“Go to Andrew.”“But Mom—”“Shh. It’s okay, baby. I’m fine.”“You’re not fine, you’re—”“Shhhhhh. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Go to your brother. Your brother needsyou.”The doctors kept working, and there was nothing I could do to help her. Iwent back outside to be with Andrew. We sat down together, and he told me thestory.They were coming home from church, a big group, my mom and Andrew andIsaac, her new husband and his children and a whole bunch of his extendedfamily, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. They had just pulled into thedriveway when Abel pulled up and got out of his car. He had his gun. He lookedright at my mother.“You’ve stolen my life,” he said. “You’ve taken everything away from me. NowI’m going to kill all of you.”Andrew stepped in front of his father. He stepped right in front of the gun.“Don’t do this, Dad, please. You’re drunk. Just put the gun away.”Abel looked down at his son.“No,” he said. “I’m killing everybody, and if you don’t walk away I will shootyou first.”Andrew stepped aside.“His eyes were not lying,” he told me. “He had the eyes of the Devil. In thatmoment I could tell my father was gone.”

For all the pain I felt that day, in hindsight, I have to imagine that Andrew’spain was far greater than mine. My mom had been shot by a man I despised. Ifanything, I felt vindicated; I’d been right about Abel all along. I could direct myanger and hatred toward him with no shame or guilt whatsoever. But Andrew’smother had been shot by Andrew’s father, a father he loved. How does hereconcile his love with that situation? How does he carry on loving both sides?Both sides of himself?Isaac was only four years old. He didn’t fully comprehend what washappening, and as Andrew stepped aside, Isaac started crying.“Daddy, what are you doing? Daddy, what are you doing?”“Isaac, go to your brother,” Abel said.Isaac ran over to Andrew, and Andrew held him. Then Abel raised his gunand he started shooting. My mother jumped in front of the gun to protecteveryone, and that’s when she took the first bullet, not in her leg but in her buttcheek. She collapsed, and as she fell to the ground she screamed.“Run!”Abel kept shooting and everyone ran. They scattered. My mom was strugglingto get back to her feet when Abel walked up and stood over her. He pointed thegun at her head point-blank, execution-style. Then he pulled the trigger. Nothing.The gun misfired. Click! He pulled the trigger again, same thing. Then again andagain. Click! Click! Click! Click! Four times he pulled the trigger, and four timesthe gun misfired. Bullets were popping out of the ejection port, falling out of thegun, falling down on my mom and clattering to the ground.Abel stopped to see what was wrong with the gun. My mother jumped up in apanic. She shoved him aside, ran for the car, jumped into the driver’s seat.Andrew ran behind and jumped into the passenger seat next to her. Just asshe turned the ignition, Andrew heard one last gunshot, and the windshield wentred. Abel had fired from behind the car. The bullet went into the back of her headand exited through the front of her face, and blood sprayed everywhere. Her bodyslumped over the steering wheel. Andrew, reacting without thinking, pulled mymom to the passenger side, flipped over her, jumped into the driver’s seat,slammed the car into gear, and raced to the hospital in Linksfield.I asked Andrew what happened to Abel. He didn’t know. I was filled withrage, but there was nothing I could do. I felt completely impotent, but I still felt Ihad to do something. So I took out my phone and I called him—I called the manwho’d just shot my mom, and he actually picked up.“Trevor.”“You killed my mom.”“Yes, I did.”

“You killed my mom!”“Yes. And if I could find you, I would kill you as well.”Then he hung up. It was the most chilling moment. It was terrifying.Whatever nerve I’d worked up to call him I immediately lost. To this day I don’tknow what I was thinking. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I was justenraged.I kept asking Andrew questions, trying to get more details. Then, as we weretalking, a nurse came outside looking for me.“Are you the family?” she asked.“Yes.”“Sir, there’s a problem. Your mother was speaking a bit at first. She’s stoppednow, but from what we’ve gathered she doesn’t have health insurance.”“What? No, no. That can’t be true. I know my mom has health insurance.”She didn’t. As it turned out, a few months prior, she’d decided, “This healthinsurance is a scam. I never get sick. I’m going to cancel it.” So now she had nohealth insurance.“We can’t treat your mother here,” the nurse said. “If she doesn’t haveinsurance we have to send her to a state hospital.”“State hospital?! What—no! You can’t. My mom’s been shot in the head.You’re going to put her back on a gurney? Send her out in an ambulance? She’lldie. You need to treat her right now.”“Sir, we can’t. We need a form of payment.”“I’m your form of payment. I’ll pay.”“Yes, people say that, but without a guarantee—”I pulled out my credit card.“Here,” I said. “Take this. I’ll pay. I’ll pay for everything.”“Sir, hospital can be very expensive.”“I don’t care.”“Sir, I don’t think you understand. Hospital can be really expensive.”“Lady, I have money. I’ll pay anything. Just help us.”“Sir, you don’t understand. We have to do so many tests. One test alone couldcost two, three thousand rand.”“Three thousan—what? Lady, this is my mother’s life we’re talking about. I’llpay.”“Sir, you don’t understand. Your mother has been shot. In her brain. She’ll be

in ICU. One night in ICU could cost you fifteen, twenty thousand rand.”“Lady, are you not listening to me? This is my mother’s life. This is her life.Take the money. Take all of it. I don’t care.”“Sir! You don’t understand. I’ve seen this happen. Your mother could be inthe ICU for weeks. This could cost you five hundred thousand, six hundredthousand. Maybe even millions. You’ll be in debt for the rest of your life.”I’m not going to lie to you: I paused. I paused hard. In that moment, what Iheard the nurse saying was, “All of your money will be gone,” and then I started tothink, Well…what is she, fifty? That’s pretty good, right? She’s lived a good life.I genuinely did not know what to do. I stared at the nurse as the shock of whatshe’d said sunk in. My mind raced through a dozen different scenarios. What if Ispend that money and then she dies anyway? Do I get a refund? I actuallyimagined my mother, as frugal as she was, waking up from a coma and saying,“You spent how much? You idiot. You should have saved that money to look afteryour brothers.” And what about my brothers? They would be my responsibilitynow. I would have to raise the family, which I couldn’t do if I was millions in debt,and it was always my mother’s solemn vow that raising my brothers was the onething I would never have to do. Even as my career took off, she’d refused any helpI offered. “I don’t want you paying for your mother the same way I had to pay formine,” she’d say. “I don’t want you raising your brothers the same way Abel had toraise his.”My mother’s greatest fear was that I would end up paying the black tax, that Iwould get trapped by the cycle of poverty and violence that came before me. Shehad always promised me that I would be the one to break that cycle. I would be theone to move forward and not back. And as I looked at that nurse outside theemergency room, I was petrified that the moment I handed her my credit card, thecycle would just continue and I’d get sucked right back in.People say all the time that they’d do anything for the people they love. Butwould you really? Would you do anything? Would you give everything? I don’tknow that a child knows that kind of selfless love. A mother, yes. A mother willclutch her children and jump from a moving car to keep them from harm. She willdo it without thinking. But I don’t think the child knows how to do that, notinstinctively. It’s something the child has to learn.I pressed my credit card into the nurse’s hand.“Do whatever you have to do. Just please help my mom.”We spent the rest of the day in limbo, waiting, not knowing, pacing aroundthe hospital, family members stopping by. Several hours later, the doctor finallycame out of the emergency room to give us an update.“What’s happening?” I asked.“Your mother is stable,” he said. “She’s out of surgery.”

“Is she going to be okay?”He thought for a moment about what he was going to say.“I don’t like to use this word,” he said, “because I’m a man of science and Idon’t believe in it. But what happened to your mother today was a miracle. I neversay that, because I hate it when people say it, but I don’t have any other way toexplain this.”The bullet that hit my mother in the butt, he said, was a through-and-through. It went in, came out, and didn’t do any real damage. The other bulletwent through the back of her head, entering below the skull at the top of her neck.It missed the spinal cord by a hair, missed the medulla oblongata, and traveledthrough her head just underneath the brain, missing every major vein, artery, andnerve. With the trajectory the bullet was on, it was headed straight for her left eyesocket and would have blown out her eye, but at the last second it slowed down,hit her cheekbone instead, shattered her cheekbone, ricocheted off, and came outthrough her left nostril. On the gurney in the emergency room, the blood hadmade the wound look much worse than it was. The bullet took off only a tiny flapof skin on the side of her nostril, and it came out clean, with no bullet fragmentsleft inside. She didn’t even need surgery. They stopped the bleeding, stitched herup in back, stitched her up in front, and let her heal.“There was nothing we can do, because there’s nothing we need to do,” thedoctor said.My mother was out of the hospital in four days. She was back at work inseven.—The doctors kept her sedated the rest of that day and night to rest. They told all ofus to go home. “She’s stable,” they said. “There’s nothing you can do here. Gohome and sleep.” So we did.I went back first thing the next morning to be with my mother in her roomand wait for her to wake up. When I walked in she was still asleep. The back of herhead was bandaged. She had stitches in her face and gauze covering her nose andher left eye. She looked frail and weak, tired, one of the few times in my life I’dever seen her look that way.I sat close by her bed, holding her hand, waiting and watching her breathe, aflood of thoughts going through my mind. I was still afraid I was going to lose her.I was angry at myself for not being there, angry at the police for all the times theydidn’t arrest Abel. I told myself I should have killed him years ago, which wasridiculous to think because I’m not capable of killing anyone, but I thought itanyway. I was angry at the world, angry at God. Because all my mom does is pray.If there’s a fan club for Jesus, my mom is definitely in the top 100, and this is whatshe gets?

After an hour or so of waiting, she opened her unbandaged eye. The secondshe did, I lost it. I started bawling. She asked for some water and I gave her a cup,and she leaned forward a bit to sip through the straw. I kept bawling and bawlingand bawling. I couldn’t control myself.“Shh,” she said. “Don’t cry, baby. Shhhhh. Don’t cry.”“How can I not cry, Mom? You almost died.”“No, I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to die. It’s okay. I wasn’t going todie.”“But I thought you were dead.” I kept bawling and bawling. “I thought I’d lostyou.”“No, baby. Baby, don’t cry. Trevor. Trevor, listen. Listen to me. Listen.”“What?” I said, tears streaming down my face.“My child, you must look on the bright side.”“What? What are you talking about, ‘the bright side’? Mom, you were shot inthe face. There is no bright side.”“Of course there is. Now you’re officially the best-looking person in thefamily.”She broke out in a huge smile and started laughing. Through my tears, Istarted laughing, too. I was bawling my eyes out and laughing hysterically at thesame time. We sat there and she squeezed my hand and we cracked each other upthe way we always did, mother and son, laughing together through the pain in anintensive-care recovery room on a bright and sunny and beautiful day.

When my mother was shot, so much happened so quickly. We were only able to piece thewhole story together after the fact, as we collected all the different accounts from everyonewho was there. Waiting around at the hospital that day, we had so many unansweredquestions, like, What happened to Isaac? Where was Isaac? We only found out after we foundhim and he told us.When Andrew sped off with my mom, leaving the four-year-old alone on the front lawn,Abel walked over to his youngest, picked him up, put the boy in his car, and drove away. Asthey drove, Isaac turned to his dad.“Dad, why did you kill Mom?” he asked, at that point assuming, as we all did, that my momwas dead.“Because I’m very unhappy,” Abel replied. “Because I’m very sad.”“Yeah, but you shouldn’t kill Mom. Where are we going now?”“I’m going to drop you off at your uncle’s house.”“And where are you going?”“I’m going to kill myself.”“But don’t kill yourself, Dad.”“No, I’m going to kill myself.”The uncle Abel was talking about was not a real uncle but a friend. He dropped Isaac offwith this friend and then he drove off. He spent that day and went to everyone, relatives andfriends, and said his goodbyes. He even told people what he had done. “This is what I’ve done.I’ve killed her, and I’m now on the way to kill myself. Goodbye.” He spent the whole day on thisstrange farewell tour, until finally one of his cousins called him out.“You need to man up,” the cousin said. “This is the coward’s way. You need to turnyourself in. If you were man enough to do this, you have to be man enough to face theconsequences.”Abel broke down and handed his gun over to the cousin, the cousin drove him to the policestation, and Abel turned himself in.He spent a couple of weeks in jail, waiting for a bail hearing. We filed a motion opposingbail because he’d shown that he was a threat. Since Andrew and Isaac were still minors, socialworkers started getting involved. We felt like the case was open-and-shut, but then one day,after a month or so, we got a call that he’d made bail. The great irony was that he got bailbecause he told the judge that if he was in jail, he couldn’t earn money to support his kids. Buthe wasn’t supporting his kids—my mom was supporting the kids.So Abel was out. The case slowly ground its way through the legal system, and everythingwent against us. Because of my mother’s miraculous recovery, the charge was only attemptedmurder. And because no domestic violence charges had ever been filed in all the times mymother had called the police to report him, Abel had no criminal record. He got a good lawyer,who continued to lean on the court about the fact that he had children at home who neededhim. The case never went to trial. Abel pled guilty to attempted murder. He was given threeyears’ probation. He didn’t serve a single day in prison. He kept joint custody of his sons. He’swalking around Johannesburg today, completely free. The last I heard he still lives somewherearound Highlands North, not too far from my mom.—The final piece of the story came from my mom, who could only tell us her side after she wokeup. She remembered Abel pulling up and pointing the gun at Andrew. She remembered falling

to the ground after getting shot in the ass. Then Abel came and stood over her and pointed hisgun at her head. She looked up and looked at him straight down the barrel of the gun. Thenshe started to pray, and that’s when the gun misfired. Then it misfired again. Then it misfiredagain, and again. She jumped up, shoved him away, and ran for the car. Andrew leapt inbeside her and she turned the ignition and then her memory went blank.To this day, nobody can explain what happened. Even the police didn’t understand.Because it wasn’t like the gun didn’t work. It fired, and then it didn’t fire, and then it firedagain for the final shot. Anyone who knows anything about firearms will tell you that a 9mmhandgun cannot misfire in the way that gun did. But at the crime scene the police had drawnlittle chalk circles all over the driveway, all with spent shell casings from the shots Abel fired,and then these four bullets, intact, from when he was standing over my mom—nobody knowswhy.My mom’s total hospital bill came to 50,000 rand. I paid it the day we left. For four dayswe’d been in the hospital, family members visiting, talking and hanging out, laughing andcrying. As we packed up her things to leave, I was going on about how insane the whole weekhad been.“You’re lucky to be alive,” I told her. “I still can’t believe you didn’t have any healthinsurance.”“Oh but I do have insurance,” she said.“You do?”“Yes. Jesus.”“Jesus?”“Jesus.”“Jesus is your health insurance?”“If God is with me, who can be against me?”“Okay, Mom.”“Trevor, I prayed. I told you I prayed. I don’t pray for nothing.”“You know,” I said, “for once I cannot argue with you. The gun, the bullets—I can’t explainany of it. So I’ll give you that much.” Then I couldn’t resist teasing her with one last little jab.“But where was your Jesus to pay your hospital bill, hmm? I know for a fact that He didn’t paythat.”She smiled and said, “You’re right. He didn’t. But He blessed me with the son who did.”

For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man.

For nurturing my career these past years and steering me down the road that ledto this book, I owe many thanks to Norm Aladjem, Derek Van Pelt, Sanaz Yamin,Rachel Rusch, Matt Blake, Jeff Endlich, and Jill Fritzo.For making this book deal happen and keeping it on track during a very tightand hectic time, I would like to thank Peter McGuigan and his team at FoundryLiterary + Media, including Kirsten Neuhaus, Sara DeNobrega, and Claire Harris.Also, many thanks to Tanner Colby for helping me put my story on the page.For seeing the potential in this book and making it a reality, I would like tothank everyone at Random House and Spiegel & Grau, including my editor ChrisJackson, publishers Julie Grau and Cindy Spiegel, Tom Perry, Greg Mollica, SusanTurner, Andrea DeWerd, Leigh Marchant, Barbara Fillon, Dhara Parikh, RebeccaBerlant, Kelly Chian, Nicole Counts, and Gina Centrello.For bringing this book home to South Africa and making sure it is publishedwith the utmost care, I would like to thank everyone at Pan Macmillan SouthAfrica, including Sean Fraser, Sandile Khumalo, Andrea Nattrass, RhulaniNetshivhera, Sandile Nkosi, Nkateko Traore, Katlego Tapala, Wesley Thompson,and Mia van Heerden.For reading this manuscript in its early stages and sharing thoughts and ideasto make it the finished product you hold in your hands, I owe my deepest gratitudeto Khaya Dlanga, David Kibuuka, Anele Mdoda, Ryan Harduth, Sizwe Dhlomo,and Xolisa Dyeshana.And, finally, for bringing me into this world and making me the man I amtoday, I owe the greatest debt, a debt I can never repay, to my mother.

ABOUT THE AUTHORTREVOR NOAH is a comedian from South Africa.trevornoah.comFacebook.com/​OfficialTrevorNoahTwitter: @TrevornoahInstagram: @trevornoah

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