Spreading love

Traidy Bugeja-Naidoo’s style stands out. Colour clashes and precolonial prints, usually paired with the latest-season sneakers or Crocs. As does his gift of the gab. A trifecta of sass, wit and impeccable delivery. And beneath the colourful exterior is a character just as complex and vibrant.

A restless, millennial multi-hyphenate, he emigrated to Australia in 2018 to study law in Parramatta and while completing the degree he took on work in foster care, mental health and disability support organisations, including not-for-profit Breakthru in Parramatta. At the same time, he served as a core part of his Pentecostal church’s ministry team in Bondi.

Within a few years, he was qualified as a lawyer. Within a few more, he had co-founded National Disability Insurance Scheme service provider Chosen Family, with the goal of helping people who have fallen through the gaps co-design their future.

Born in Gqberha, South Africa, Traidy’s early life traversed the challenges of poverty, homophobia in his evangelical community and the long shadow of his mother’s mental health battles.

‘My childhood wasn’t pretty. Mum had severe depression. Dad was an alcoholic and abusive. My grandfather was murdered in my aunt’s home,’ Traidy shares over ice cream sitting in Penrith Westfield’s food court.

His mother’s ailing mental health was diagnosed by their church community as a spirit of depression. And then later a psychiatrist diagnosed his own homosexuality. Traidy recalls how his father considered it an intergenerational curse.

This is at odds with the values of pride, diversity and inclusion that Traidy now embraces and has committed his life’s work to.

‘In Afrikaans there is no word for “trauma”. So when your psychiatrist says “you have trauma”, you kinda just blink and believe it’s something you’ve inherited. The idea of trauma today, here [in Greater Western Sydney] is very different.’

Traidy has forgiven his blood-family and their relationships have repaired since their nadir in his early adolescence. He even credits his childhood for moulding him into someone softer and kinder.

‘I don’t blame my parents,’ he says, emphasising his mother’s sense of justice has forged his own. ‘But coming from Africa, some parts of our culture were stuck in a time capsule that hadn’t learned to move with the times.’

Whether in South Africa or Australia, Traidy says people who are queer or living with disability often experience being disowned. ‘We carry that sense of loss,’ he says. ‘But I really believe none of us are disowned by the universe. And family is not limited to bloodline.’

In March 2024, Traidy married his husband Jamie ―a queer trans man who works alongside him as co-founder and marketing director of Chosen Family.

‘I had to go through 70 dates with airheads who couldn’t hold a conversation before I met him,’ Traidy says. ‘I was like “God, please. I’m ready!” And then, from the heavens, came Jamie.’

Chosen Family states its organisational vision as ‘dismantling technologies, systems and moral frameworks of oppression’.

‘We are a smaller, specialised provider that’s here to disrupt the disability sector with true family values,’ he says. ‘We always come back to our clients’ needs, not the revenue streams. We don’t just look at disability, but the intersectional factors that make up wellbeing.’

Traidy says that while he has been burned, and perhaps burned some bridges himself in his previous life as a church leader, he now sees his role in the disability support sector as his core ministry.

‘It’s funny how your path in life can go. Growing up, the only time I saw people with a disability was at a healing service or watching [televangelist] Benny Hinn,’ he says. ‘If someone had a disability or was not perfect in the normative ways, you know people would be thinking “Well, someone in their ancestry must’ve really pissed God off!”.’

That’s a mindset he now considers ridiculous. ‘I guess I am on the opposite end of the spectrum now, fighting this fight.’

There is a long way to go improving disability support in Australia, particularly for queer people, he argues.

‘A lot of my clients are trans and they continue to have challenges getting their gender or name changed on certain documents. They still have challenges with being misgendered in the system.’

He reflects that queer workers and clients alike are tired from the pressure to be a model for inclusion. Being the one person who is queer in the workplace. The pin-up poster of resilience.

‘It’s getting better, but the problem is everyone says they are an ally because it’s trendy.’

Asked if this has taken a personal toll he snaps back. ‘Honey, I’m thick-skinned. When someone says to me: “You’re a f***ing f**got”, I respond “Yes, of course. So what? I’m a flaming f***ing f**got to you!”.’

During one of our first meetings, at a queer bar in Redfern, Traidy told me a client of his discontinued Chosen Family services because they believed he was living ‘a life of sin’.

‘If that’s their opinion, I bless them,’ he says. ‘Because I see myself as a connoisseur of grace for my family and community. Because that’s the easiest way to turn a hater into a supporter.’

Despite discrimination in the sector, Traidy is a sought after motivational speaker in the field, lauded nationally for the intersectional approach he takes to disability support.

When I attended one of his speaking gigs in Bankstown, in December 2023, I found a charismatic leader preaching to a flock of secular, diverse peoples in the disability sector. Watching him whip the crowd into a frenzy, then suddenly dropping the frequency at times to speak to individual experiences, I marvelled at his talent. His power to sway an audience.

Afterwards, I congratulated him on his performance and asked him if he considered himself a preacher still. ‘Definitely,’ he responded without skipping a beat.

I ask, only half-jokingly, if his disability support work is now just a laundry to rinse and repeat his previous ministries in churches in Australia and South Africa. He smirks and clasps his palms together in a posture of prayer: ‘You can take the boy out of church but that girl gonna keep singing. Now I just call it the universe working through me.’

Friends, employees and peers of Traidy describe him as ‘bold’, ‘unapologetic’, ‘otherworldly’ and ‘patient’. Traidy says he is grateful to hear this, but that he wouldn’t lead any other way than by example. ‘If I am not free, and I am bound up in hatred and shame, that is something that I’m gonna sow and then reap,’ he says. ‘I don’t have time for bitter fruit in my life. I need to get the job done. Connect the people. Do the work.’

Robert Juan Kennard is of mixed settler ancestry and currently lives on Cammeraygal lands. His writing has been published by Cordite Poetry Review, SBS Voices and in anthologies produced by the Ultimo Prize and Unyoked Writers. He is completing a Master of Creative Writing at Western Sydney University.

Parramatta Profiles is a writing and photographic series that profiles individuals across Parramatta communities. Drawing on art, music, religion, activism and sport, each snapshot captures life in this dynamic city. A collaboration between Powerhouse and the Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University, this project supports the development of student writers by providing an opportunity to work with professional editors and be published by Powerhouse online.