Noah’s latest special dropped on Netflix last night, 14 April 2026 and as always, in my humble opinion, it is a work of genius.
Predictably he starts off the show with a lengthy and hilarious overview of that other alien, Donald Trump’s, threat to sue him for his comments during recent Grammy Awards.
It’s clear that Trevor puts in a lot of time in effort in preparing his shows ‘cos the way he analyses and decodes the not so hidden outright childish stupidity of Trump’s comments is very funny. But, I suspect its not for everyone, because when you experience this level of comedy you quickly realise that Noah is using the guise of comedy to shine a huge spotlight on a very serious issue, i.e. the leader of the so-called free-world’s lunacy.
The way Trevor describes a potential meeting between visiting aliens and Trump is funny and scary at the same time, because even though you know there is no proof that aliens exist, you laugh nervously, knowing that if they did exist and they did actually meet Trump, the way Trevor describes it going down is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
I’m a big fan of Trevor’s and I happen to think that he belongs to that rare breed of uber-intellectual who has the ability to communicate the underlying gravity and implications of socio-political issues through humour. An experience that either leaves you with a newly acquired sadness at the desperately dysfunctional nature of the times of the day, or you laugh it off as just another bit of madness that makes up our collective human conditions.
He moves on to describe his experience of visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture and again plays with your emotions by taking you on a roller coaster ride of pain, shame and hilarity, depending on your perspective and grasp of slavery.
The global narrative on slavery is finally beginning to change in many ways, but the one way that I think it is changing that is pertinent to us as Coloureds is that we need to realise that firstly our ancestors who were brought here as slaves, were not slaves in the land that they were born. They were ordinary people living in typical communities with the potential to produce perfectly productive individuals like for example, economists, doctors, lawyers, leaders, cooks, hunters etc. What I’m trying to say is that the term slave should no longer imply a particular mind-set of a stereotype individual. And what is coming to light now is that the majority of the vast wealth accumulated by wealthy Europeans and white South Africans were built on the foundations of slave labour. They did not establish their sprawling wine farms in the Cape and other industries by the sweat of they own brows, or due to perceived superior intelligence, they used slaved labour. There was even a law back in the day in the Cape where a slave owner could beat is his slave for any reason deemed necessary by the owner, for the duration that it took him to smoke his pipe.
Dutch Burghers supervising slaves at work in the Cape
The most moving thing about Noah’s new show is when he talks about how we are living through history right now, and he uses Dr Martin Luther King’s experience and then projects to 300 years into the future and asks “who will you be when history calls”. He also makes the point that while we look back at important events in history as a seemingly inevitable outcome, the people living through it at the time had no idea how things would turn out. The Nazi influence on the world for example.
So he reminds us that we are now living through a moment in our collective history where we really don’t know how things will turnout. Which made me wonder, what we, as Coloured people are thinking about as we see soldiers being deployed in our suburbs, substance abuse continuing to destroy families and communities, and the recent announcement of the leadership of a political party that we continue to vote into power even though it has no meaningful representation of us, despite us being the largest voting bloc in the Western Cape.
Noah paints a scenario where he takes the viewer back in time and asks how they would react if they were confronted with the challenges of the time. And when you realise the grim reality of Dr Martin Luther King’s actual experiences, you can’t help but wonder if you would have been as brave as he was. You could probably substitute Dr King’s experience with Nelson Mandela’s to make it more relatable. Point is, who will you be in the history of Coloured people when your children, and their children’s children, read up on this time in our history?
Trevor Noah: Joy in The Trenches is available on Netflix now.
