Mr Parks Tau was appointed as Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs of the Republic of South Africa on the 6th of March 2023.
He was previously the Deputy Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, responsible for provincial and local government of the Republic of South Africa from 29 May 2019 until his appointment of MEC in Gauteng.
Career/Positions/Memberships/Other Activities
In 2000 during the first democratic municipal elections he was appointed as a member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) of Johannesburg, overseeing the portfolios of Developmental Planning, Transportation, and Environment until 2003. From 2003 to 2007 he was a member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) of Johannesburg, overseeing the portfolios of the Finance and Economic Development.
In May 2011 he was elected as the Mayor of Johannesburg City until 2016. He was the second democratically elected mayor. He lost the mayoralty to the DA’s Herman Mashaba in a historic defeat on the 22 of August 2016.
Background
Mpho Franklyn Parks Tau - was born in 1970 in Orlando, Soweto.
Parks Tau joined the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), and became engaged in student activism at the age of fourteen. 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, he was elected president of the Soweto Youth Congress, and later he became a leading member of the African National Congress Youth League.
After apartheid came to an end in 1994, the Africa National Congress (ANC) took power, 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.
