Pretoria - The decision by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to decline prosecuting former City of Tshwane human settlements MMC, Abel Tau, for sexual abuse charges is likely to bolster his campaign to contest the 2024 elections without his moral ground on gender-based violence (GBV) being questioned.
Tau was also ActionSA Gauteng secretary when the news broke that he allegedly raped a wife of his childhood friend and a fellow party member last year.
Some in society heavily criticised his stance on GBV, especially after the reports that more women had come forward to implicate him in separate allegations of sexual abuse.
ActionSA fired him following the incident and an internal inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse (was) brought up by at least three women.
Speaking to the Pretoria News yesterday, Tau said: “With the current rate of GBV, I was always going to be questioned about what kind of leader I will be while there is a cloud hanging over my head.”
Early this year, Tau launched a political party called United Africans Transformation, which aims to contest in the elections next year.
“This is going to give my political party a shot in the arm,” he said.
He said the NPA’s decision was supposed to be “a relief and a victory for me, but it actually brings about pain in me for the lies that were told in public about something I didn’t do”.
He said in spite of trumped-up charges laid against him he “subjected myself to legal processes” because he knew he would be vindicated.
“That is why I refused to apologise because I knew that I didn’t do it. If I knew that I did it, it was something that I would have apologised for,” Tau said.
He said he was disturbed by the fact that his reputation was tarnished by “people you would have considered as friends”.
“I am consulting with my legal team to see what it is in law to enable me to seek for a recourse. However, on second thought, I am thinking that I know the family very well. They have nothing and a legal action will possibly involve that they must get legal representation,” Tau said.
And will he gun for ActionSA for what he believed to be an unfair decision to get rid of him?
Tau said: “I am actually disappointed in ActionSA. When (Herman) Mashaba launched the party we were at least 10 at a studio in Joburg, where he announced how close I was in the hierarchy of the party.”
He recalled that when the party was campaigning in Tshwane for the 2021 local government elections “we bought T-shirts ourselves”.
He said at this stage he was not going to approach ActionSA for recourse because “we are currently in court with them”.
According to him, ActionSA’s verdict which saw him expelled from the party was “predetermined”.
The disciplinary hearing conducted by ActionSA, he said, was on the basis of what he might have done, but the party failed to prove its case “even on the balance of probability”.
“I am waiting for a court case and thereafter I will consider going after ActionSA for loss of income,” Tau said.
He said NPA came to a conclusion not to prosecute him after his legal team presented its water-tight case backed by video footage to the institution.
“Unfortunately that woman was not aware of the type of surveillance cameras set up in the vicinity where I stay. There was absolutely no way I could have attempted to rape someone. There were so many lies in the statements that she gave to the police.”
NPA spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana reportedly said the institution decided on April 11 not to go ahead with a case against Tau “after receiving representations and consulting with the complainant”.
Pretoria News