Born to a black mother and a white father, Trevor Noah was raised in apartheid South Africa. He was "born a crime" according to his own government.
Trevor Noah has done world comedy tours and is now a US talk show celebrity having taken over from Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
In an Al Jazeera interview about his book “Born a Crime”, Noah recounts tales of growing up in apartheid South Africa unaware that his very existence was illegal.
The interviewer highlights Noah’s many references to Nelson Mandela in his book and mentions one of Mandela’s most prolific remarks, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians".
When asked about what Palestinians can learn from South Africans went through, Noah stated “It’s such a complicated issue, and yet some days it seems so simple… The oppression of people with regard to the settlements and expansion... the way Israel is pursuing what they are pursuing right now is not sustainable and it is not an action that promotes the idea of seeking out a peaceful or peace agreement in any way shape or form."
Noah affirmed that you can not deny that what is happening in Palestine is similar to what happened in South Africa as “the system of oppression that is applied, it is very similar to an Apartheid state."
One of the leading figures of the South African liberation movement was Ahmed Kathrada. Noah references Kathrada stating that one thing any oppressed group can learn from South Africa is that "we fought because we knew we were right and we fought because we knew we would win."
