Born a Crime

Before Chapter 2 begins, Noah gives a brief overview of how apartheid developed in South Africa. He says that “[a]partheid was perfect racism” (19), took centuries to develop, and dates back to 1652, when the Dutch landed at Cape Town and established a trading colony: “To impose white rule, the Dutch colonists went to war with the natives, ultimately developing a set of laws to subjugate and enslave them” (19). These original Dutch settlers “developed their own language, culture, and customs, eventually becoming their own people, the Afrikaners—the white tribe of Africa” (19). Because Black South Africans greatly outnumbered white South Africans, “the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools” to maintain power (19), so they studied institutionalized racism from all over the world. They saw what was successful and what wasn’t, published reports regarding their observations, and “used that knowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man” (19). Noah says that apartheid “was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control” (19).

Chapter 2 begins with Noah saying that he grew up in South Africa during apartheid: “[It] was awkward because I was raised in a mixed family. My mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is Black. My father, Robert, is white. Swiss/German, to be precise” (21). He says that during apartheid, interracial relationships were one of the worst crimes imaginable because for “any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent” (21). He says that unlike in America, where “anyone with one drop of black blood automatically became black,” mixed people in South Africa are neither white nor Black but are considered “colored” (22). During apartheid, “colored,” Black, white, or Indian people were all required to register their race with the government, and each group of people was then relocated and segregated according to their classification. The penalty for rebellion against this rule was five years in prison.

While most Black women during this time work in a factory or as a maid, Patricia takes a typing class and gets a secretarial job at ICI, a multinational pharmaceutical company. Noah says that her ability to get this job is a product of the 1980s South African governmental reform, where, in an attempt to “quell international protest over the atrocities and human rights abuses of apartheid” (23), white-collar jobs began hiring token Black workers in low-level positions. Noah says that the “ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country, with every black person stripped of his or her citizenship and relocated to live in the homelands” (23). When Patricia first starts working for ICI, she is living in Soweto, the “township where the government had relocated [Noah's] family decades before” (23). However, being unhappy there, she stays in town, hiding and sleeping in public restrooms until she understands how to navigate the city. She learns how to blend into the city by wearing maid’s overalls, and she ends up renting a flat from a friend of a friend, a German man, who lets her rent it in his name.

Patricia’s secret flat is in Hillbrow, the “Greenwich Village of South Africa. It was a thriving scene, cosmopolitan and liberal” (25). Hillbrow is full of artists, theaters, and nightclubs, and, most importantly, it is a space where different races mix freely, albeit secretly. While living in the flat in Hillbrow, Patricia, 24, meets Robert, 46. He is “quiet and reserved; she [is] wild and free” (25), but something between them works. They frequent the night clubs together, begin spending time alone together, and eventually Patricia tells him that she wants to have a kid. He says he doesn’t want kids, but she gives him a proposition: impregnate her, and she won’t ask him to help her raise the child. After a long time, he eventually agrees, and nine months later Noah is born.

Because it is illegal for people of different races to have a baby, Noah’s dad isn’t on the birth certificate, and she tells the doctors that his dad is a light-skinned Black man from Swaziland. Robert ends up wanting to be part of Noah’s life, and Patricia takes him to visit Robert frequently, yet secretly.

Whenever Patricia takes Noah to see her family in the all-Black Soweto, Noah isn’t allowed outside for fear that he’ll be taken away by authorities because he’s colored and in the wrong area.

Before Chapter 3 begins, Noah explains the dynamic of religion of the time:

South Africa is a mix of the old and the new, the ancient and the modern, and South African Christianity is a perfect example of this. We adopted the religion of our colonizers, but most people held on to the old ancestral ways, too, just in case. In South Africa, faith in the Holy Trinity exists quite comfortably alongside belief in witchcraft, in casting spells and putting curses on one’s enemies (33).

Chapter 3 then opens with Noah remarking on gender rules during this period: “I grew up in a world run by women. My father was loving and devoted, but I could only see him when and where apartheid allowed” (35). He says the only “semi-regular male figure” in his life was his mother’s father, Temperance Noah, who was “boisterous and loud” and quite the lady’s man (35). For most of his life, his family considers him eccentric, but later they find out he is bipolar. Noah’s grandmother, Frances Noah, is the family matriarch. She “ran the house, looked after the kids, did the cooking and the cleaning” (37). His great-grandmother, Koko, lives with his grandmother, and she is blind.

Noah explains the absence of his father: “Apartheid kept me away from my father because he was white, but for almost all the kids I knew on my grandmother’s block in Soweto, apartheid had taken away their fathers as well, just for different reasons” (38). Most men are either off working in mines or fighting for the cause in exile, leaving the women to take care of the household and children. Religion “filled the void left by absent men” (39), a sentiment made clear by Patricia, who tells Noah that God is her husband.

In Soweto, prayer meetings take place nearly every night of the week and rotate between houses. The prayer meetings consist of singing and praying that goes well into the night. When the prayer meeting is at Noah’s grandmother’s house, Noah is asked to lead the prayers because he speaks fluent English, and “English prayers get answered first” (40), an idea propagated by the fact that white people seem to always get their way.

Noah has a fondness for Soweto. For the million people living in Soweto, there are no bars, restaurants, or paved roads, but the people create their own. The spaza shops are informal grocery stores and the shebeens are bars set up in backyards. In Soweto, everyone is given a piece of land by the government, and people build what they can afford on that piece of land. Most start out as shanties, but eventually people replace plywood with bricks and add rooms and windows until eventually it’s a stable home.

Despite having individual homes, everyone must share public bathrooms. Noah laments the disgusting smells and annoying flies that plague the toilets. As a child, rather than braving the elements to relieve himself, he decides to defecate on a newspaper like a puppy. He thinks he’s gotten away with the act, but his blind great-grandmother smells something disgusting in the house. Noah throws the rolled-up newspaper away, but once his grandmother and mother come home, they find it. Rather than confessing to what he’s done, Noah denies it, leading his family to believe that a demon has left the excrement in the trashcan. As a result, his family calls everyone in the neighborhood outside to burn the pile in hopes of warding off evil spirits.

Before Chapter 4 begins, Noah talks about the power of language: “Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says ‘We’re the same.’ A language barrier says ‘We’re different.’ The architects of apartheid understood this” (49). During apartheid, rather than teaching the students in a common language, the government forced each school to teach the children in their home language. This sent the message to the children that they are different from each other, ultimately leading to more fighting and dissension between Black South Africans. However, Noah says that language can also convince people that they’re the same: “[I]f the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code” (50).

Chapter 4 opens with Noah recalling an afternoon he was playing doctor with his cousins at his grandmother’s house. While examining his cousin’s ear, Noah accidentally punctures his eardrum and blood starts squirting everywhere. After making sure his ear is okay, Noah’s grandmother beats his cousin but not Noah. That night she tells Noah’s mom that she can’t beat Noah because he’s white, and she doesn’t know how to hit a white child. This isn’t the only time Noah gets special treatment from his family for being light-skinned. His grandfather lets him ride in the back of the car and calls him “Mastah” (52), as though he’s Noah’s chauffeur. In fact, his cousins always got in trouble for being naughty, but never Noah. The only person Noah ever fears is his mother because she doesn’t let him get away with anything.

Noah recounts how his "mixed" ethnicity segregated him: “Nearly one million people lived in Soweto. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them were black—and then there was me. I was famous in my neighborhood just because of the color of my skin” (53). Noah never feels like he fits in with anyone, no matter the color of their skin, and he decides that the “quickest way to bridge the race gap was through language” (54). Like his mother, he ends up learning multiple South African languages, which ultimately allows him to “cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate the world” (55). He describes how he adapted in this adverse environment: “I became a chameleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color” (56).

Once apartheid comes to an end, South Africa’s private schools are open to all races. Noah ends up going to a private Catholic school. Despite the desegregated school, on the playground kids flock to their own race. For the first time, Noah realizes he identifies as Black.

Before Chapter 5 begins, Noah briefly describes the education system in South Africa. Before apartheid, “any black South African who received a formal education was likely taught by European missionaries, foreign enthusiasts eager to Christianize and Westernize the natives” (61). The missionary schools taught English, medicine, and law, among other reputable subjects. However, once apartheid began, in an effort to “cripple the black mind,” the government built “Bantu” schools (61). These schools taught rudimentary subjects, such as counting potatoes or paving roads, and left out science, history, and other valuable subjects. The missionary schools and the Bantu schools “offer a neat comparison of the two groups of whites who oppressed [the Black people], the British and the Afrikaners” (62). Noah says that the British at least gave them something to aspire to; if they could talk and dress like the English, then maybe one day the Black South African would be welcome into society. However, the Afrikaners never looked at Black South Africans as people at all.

Chapter 5 opens with Patricia telling Noah, “I chose to have you because I wanted something to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return” (63). As a child, Patricia never felt like she fit in at home and grew up with nothing. Her parents had a brief and unhappy marriage. She adored her father, and once her parents split up she wanted to live with him. Instead, she was sent to live with her aunt in the homelands, where she was one of multiple children who was forced to work on the farm with little to no food. Her biggest blessing was that she met a white pastor who taught her English. At 21, she got a decent job and moved back in with her family. However, her mom told her that her paycheck should go to the family, so she moved to the city to escape the confines of her family life.

She tells Noah that she doesn’t want him to have the same life she had. She teaches Noah English and reads to him constantly, and as a child, his books are his prized possession. For much of his childhood it’s just him and his mother, and she spoils him with experience, like taking him to parks, driving him through the city, and letting him drive their car: “My mother took me places black people never went. She refused to be bound by ridiculous ideas of what black people couldn’t or shouldn’t do” (73).