Trevor Noah on Jay Leno – NAH MEAN! from Seth Rotherham on Vimeo.
Laughter is the best medicine and South African comedian Trevor Noah knows it. His hilarious stand-up on growing up as a mixed-race child during Apartheid has made him quite popular in his native country and now abroad, having become the first African comedian to perform on Jay Leno's "The Tonight Show" in the United States.
Noah was born to a black South African mother and a white Swiss father when interracial relationships were illegal, which is the source of his comedic material. He often jokes that he was “born a crime.”
During his routine act he jokingly says, "My mom would be arrested, she would be fined and still she was like 'ooh, I don't care, I want a white man, ooh. And my dad was also like, well, you know how the Swiss love chocolate."
On growing up in Soweto Township with his parents, "In the streets my father couldn't walk with us—he would walk on the other side of the road and wave at me—like a creepy pedophile. “And my mom could walk with me but every time the police went by she would drop me—I felt like a bag of weed."
He’s only 28 and yet he has managed to become South Africa’s stand out comedian with his latest show “The Racist.”
In this exclusive interview with CNN’s African Voices Noah Trevor shares his journey and motivation to make people laugh:
