Athi-Patra Ruga

born 9 March 1984, Umtata, South Africa

Ruga was born in 1984 in Umtata in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Before the 1994 elections, his parents and sisters participated in anti-apartheid protests. They told him about a place called Azania. Azania, was what South Africa was called long ago. During the anti-apartheid struggle, activists called the country “Azania” instead of “South Africa”. They wanted South Africa to return to how it was before colonialism and apartheid. It was their dream. To Ruga, it sounded like a promised land – a place where everyone can live in freedom. 

On 27 April 1994, millions of South Africans woke up super early to do something very special: they voted in the national elections for the first time in their lives. Lines of people snaked across the country. They were excited about the future: the possibility of South Africa being the utopia that they have fought for so long and hard. Finally, their dream was about to become reality! Now, over 20 years later, have we accomplished that dream? Athi-Patra Ruga has thought about this question in his work. When he asked his father, and his father’s friends, about the horrors of apartheid, they remained silent. They were unable to answer him. This silence stretches over hundreds of years, before apartheid even, and was passed on from generation to generation. In other words, there was a gap, an absence, in Ruga’s experience. How was he going to bridge that gap?

Athi-Patra Ruga creates new myths and characters to investigate the impact of colonialism and other traumas in a South Africa after apartheid. Ruga uses the utopian land of Azania, a safe space for black, queer and femme people, to create new mythologies for a country haunted by a traumatic past. A utopia, is an imaginary place where everything is perfect. Azania is a place where everyone belongs. Ruga uses the utopia of Azania to emphasize that our current reality is not a utopia. The dreams of the people waiting in line in 1994 has yet to be fulfilled.

One day, Ruga was performing as one of his characters – a person covered head to knees in balloons, wearing bright pink tights and high heels. He was walking down the street in a rural area in Eastern Cape when he passed an old man and a child. As an openly gay man, Ruga was terrified. How would this old man react? Ruga could have gotten badly hurt. Instead, the man told Ruga he must keep on doing what he did because it is beautiful. When Ruga reached the nearby township, people cheered him on as he walked down the streets. To Ruga, this was a glimpse of the utopia that South Africa could achieve.