Parks Tau

Mpho Franklyn Parks Tau (born 1970) is a South African politician who has been a Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs since March 2023 and a Member of the National Assembly of South Africa since February 2023, representing the African National Congress. Before becoming a member of Parliament, Tau had been a Member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature where he served in the Gauteng Executive Council as MEC for Economic Development from December 2020 to October 2022. Prior to that, he was Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs between May 2019 and December 2020. Tau was the second democratically elected mayor, after Amos Masondo, of the Unified City of Johannesburg. He lost the mayoralty to the DA's Herman Mashaba in a historic defeat on the 22 of August 2016. From 2018 to 2022, he was the provincial treasurer of the Gauteng ANC branch. In December 2022, he was elected to a five-year term on the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress. Early life and education Tau was born in Orlando West, a neighbourhood of Soweto, on 6 June 1970. At the age of fourteen, he joined the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), and became engaged in student activism for the first time. In the 1980s, he was detained several times during national states of emergency—periods of strict restrictions on anti-apartheid activities—which were declared by the apartheid government of the time that was determined to regain control over the population. Tau was later elected president of the Student Representative Council at Pace Commercial College. In 1989, at the age of 19, Tau was elected president of the Soweto Youth Congress, and later he became a member of the African National Congress Youth League. Early career He was 24 years old when he was elected regional secretary of the ANC in Johannesburg and in 1996, he went on to serve on the Southern Metropolitan Local Council's Urban Development Committee. In 2000, Tau was appointed as a Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) of Johannesburg, overseeing the portfolios of Developmental Planning, Transportation, and Environment from 2000 to 2003, as well as the Finance and Economic Development portfolio between 2003 and 2011.