By Doreen Mokgolo
Former acting mayor of Tshwane, Abel Tau, is contesting to be the premier of Gauteng as a candidate of the Forum for Service Delivery, a coalition of various parties.
With 104,000 signatures collected from the public, Tau is confident the forum can tackle the challenges facing the province.
Tau served as the acting mayor of the City of Tshwane from 2019 to 2020 before stepping down amid allegations of sexually abusing a friend’s wife in 2022.
He was cleared of the charges after the National Prosecuting Authority declined to prosecute him. But the incident marked a low point in his political career; Tau was affiliated with ActionSA at the time.
Despite the “political smear campaign”, Tau told Scrolla.Africa, he has emerged stronger and is prepared to lead Gauteng.
As the leader of the Transform Alliance, which is in a coalition with the Forum for Service Delivery, he described Gauteng as a “crime scene”, mentioning government negligence as a root cause of the province’s many problems, from hijacking to unsafe schools.
To fight rolling blackouts, Tau proposed that the province’s power stations increase their generation capacity and that informal settlements should be formalised to reduce electricity wastage.
He advocated for the adoption of solar units in informal settlements to contribute to the grid.
Tau plans to implement policies that reserve certain jobs for South Africans, mentioning the dominance of foreign nationals in various sectors, including salons, spaza shops, construction and mining.
He believes locals can be trained at TVET colleges to fill these roles.
Pictured above: Abel Tau.
Image source: Supplied
