Mpho Franklyn Parks Tau (born 1970) served as the Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs until he was reappointed to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature in December 2020. He now serves as a Member of the Executive Committee (MEC) of Economic Development. Mr Tau also served as the mayor of the City of Johannesburg in Gauteng province from 2011-2016, prior to becoming a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature.
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. Tau was later elected president of the SRC at Pace Commercial College. There he met college vice president Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali, who encouraged him and other PACE students to voice their political beliefs. In 1989, at the age of 19, Tau was elected president of the Soweto Youth Congress and later he became a leading member of its subsequent incarnation, the African National Congress Youth League.
