Defying the Odds - What do We and Trevor Noah Have In Common?
I love stories about people who have overcome seemingly insurmountable prejudices and obstacles to achieve their dreams. And one such young man is South African comedian turned political commentator Trevor Noah, 35, who was chosen in 2015 by Jon Stewart, host of the award-winning The Daily Show, a US satirical news program, to replace him as host.
It didn’t seem extraordinary, until I was given a copy of Trevor’s biography - Born A Crime - by my son on Mother’s Day. Since many of us on the Wealthy Affililiate program have also come here having gone through so much, it struck a chord when I reread my notes. Stories like Trevor’s give hope that, given the will and the opportunity (which the Wealthy Affiliate is), we too can achieve our dreams, our financial objectives. So, I will just give an outline of where he started from - and where he’s at now.
Born in the dying years of apartheid on February 20, 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a black mother and a Swiss/German father, when any sexual relationship between a black and white person was still a criminal offence, and punishable by imprisonment, Trevor Noah’s birth was, technically, a crime.
Not until Nelson Mandela was released six years later on February 11, 1990, could the light-skinned Trevor and his mother move about freely together. Sounds medieval, but it was only three decades ago!
The Horror of Apartheid
Born a Crime is written in such a matter-of-fact manner, you don’t immediately comprehend the horror of how apartheid was implemented; a separate language for each tribe so that there would be minimal communication between them; the denial of modern education, so no maths, no science, no history and, specially, no analysis of anything, so that there was less chance of a thinking class emerging and so on.
Everyone had to be categorised, slotted into a race. So, for example, a Japanese was ‘white,’ while a Chinese would be slotted as ‘black.’ But who could tell the difference? It was arbitrary, it was cruel, it was illogical. It stayed that way for nearly three centuries till apartheid ended with Nelson Mandela.
Tough Love
Trevor was brought up by a single mother, who defied all the norms of her background and time. Abandoned at nine by her family, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah survived on whatever she could scrounge up, but she managed to get a basic education from a missionary, which gave her an option to be something other than a maid. Armed with some English and a burning ambition, she did a secretarial course, escaped to the city, hid with prostitutes, had a child with a white man ( a punishable crime), and brought the child up in hiding, until such time as apartheid collapsed in the early 1990s.
A devout church-goer, Patricia refused to accept the system and worked around it to get her son a formal education in the ‘white’ school system. She read voraciously to him, showed him life beyond black boundaries, opened his mind to a wider world of possibilities, much to her families’ disapproval. “My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do... that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.”
However, as Trevor says, she was no easy customer. An old school disciplinarian, she didn’t spare the rod, the belt, the shoe. But she instilled in him the capacity to think, to analyse, to argue a point.
Trevor survived. And went on to make a name for himself as a TV and radio host and comedian, first in South Africa, and then globally, eventually landing the much-coveted Jon Stewart slot in hosting The Daily Show. Trevor was then an unknown. No more. His interview style on the show is unique, because he brings a different perspective — and Jon Stewart was astute enough to see that. He has since also hosted a solo show in New York, once just a dream.
Crime and Poverty - the Cycle of Violence
Trevor is brutally frank about his own actions — his extreme and destructive naughtiness as a child, his brush with the police, his life of crime while working in the ‘hood’ for two years; “when you are poor, the ethical gradations don’t count for much.”
Trevor mentions that “my mother’s greatest fear was that I would end up paying the black tax, that I would get trapped by the cycle of poverty and violence that came before me. She had always promised me that I would be the one to break that cycle. I would be the one to move forward and not back.”
Caterpillars, Caring and Us
Unapologetic, unemotional, Trevor’s story is a glimpse not only into a rare childhood, but also a screenshot of the dying days of apartheid and the mayhem immediately after. It is a story of a life that is current. As the blurb sums up so beautifully: “Whether subsisting on caterpillars in hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or simply trying to survive the pitfalls of teenage dating, Trevor’s stories weave together to form an unforgettable portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humour — and his mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.”
Trevor’s views on poverty and helping people, is also worth paying attention to. He says it’s not enough to teach a man to fish, you need to give him the fishing rod; without the tools, how is a skill to be turned into cash? Trevor says his life path changed when a friend gave him a CD writer, which he subsequently used to set up a lucrative pirating business. And an option to dream of better things.
Yes, true, the story is about an exceptional individual, but really, it could be about so many of us, who have also defied the odds to be here on the Wealthy Affiliate platform for a common goal - an option for a better life and a chance to fulfill some dreams.
Recent Comments
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As a South African I sometimes wonder how I made it, struggling to finish my book because it opens old wounds.
Great post. I might read his book as South Africa and my new home Ukraine have so much in common.
I might watch the show now that the non-funny stooge Jon Stewart is not on it.