It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Part I: Preface–Chapter 4

Apartheid—the South African government policy of racial segregation—was genius at convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other.

Long before apartheid existed, these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another.

Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer.

The Xhosa waged a long war against 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.

There were Bible games and quizzes every week at white church, and I always trounced everyone.

Another guy, his crony, got out of the passenger side.

To impose white rule, the Dutch colonists went to war with the natives, ultimately developing a set of laws to subjugate and enslave them.

The British abolished slavery in name but kept it in practice. They did so because, in the mid-1800s, in what had been written off as a near-worthless way station on the route to the Far East, a few lucky capitalists stumbled upon the richest gold and diamond reserves in the world, and an endless supply of expendable bodies was needed to go in the ground and get it all out.

A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand.

If you ask my mother whether she ever considered the ramifications of having a mixed child under apartheid, she will say no. She had a level of fearlessness that you have to possess to take on something like she did. If you stop to consider the ramifications, you’ll never do anything.

In the early 1980s, the South African government began making minor reforms in an attempt to quell international protest over the atrocities and human rights abuses of apartheid.

Where my grandfather was big and boisterous, my grandmother was calm, calculating, with a sharp mind.

Every family in the township was allocated a piece of land by the government.

It wasn’t common to find a white or colored person who spoke African languages. The fact that I did speak them immediately endeared me to the black kids.

Most of them shut down, and black children were forced into crowded classrooms in dilapidated schools, often with teachers who were barely literate themselves.