Wrong turn at Love Street
Tau won’t get the message: his business-partner ex-lover Ayanda just isn’t that into him.
Tau (Rapulana Seiphemo) knows about business and he knows about contracts and negotiations. But he is clueless when it comes to women. Twenty years after he dropped Ayanda (Samela Tyelbooi) without so much as a goodbye SMS, he thinks that they still have a spark and can just pick up again. While she’s pushed him away since she arrived in mid-January, he won’t take no for an answer, which Rapulana says is part of his genetic make-up. “Tau is this proud businessman who has this swagger and he thinks that, ‘Hey, I’m single, you’re single – we have history so let’s just carry on.’ But that’s not going to happen.” Ayanda has spent 20 years blaming herself for ruining their relationship and sending Tau running into the arms of his now-exwife Karabo (Connie Ferguson). But while Tau is trying to get back with Ayanda, her feelings of resentment have bubbled to the surface again, explains Rapulana. Tau oversteps the mark in the boardroom this fortnight, which leads to a disagreement and Ayanda quits their business partnership. “Their fight just blows up and she storms out,” says the actor, whose character Tau is left with a mouth full of teeth in the middle of a boardroom. Ayanda meanwhile is fuming, not only at Tau for being Tau, but also at herself for making another mistake with the man she refers to as “him”.
BURNING BRIDGES
“She wishes that she had gone with her gut instinct when she arrived in Johannesburg for business. She told herself that working with Tau is bad news, personally and professionally,” adds Rapulana. Now that Ayanda has been reminded of the man that Tau is, she’s ready to pack her bags to get as far away as possible from the man who broke her heart. But how far will she have to run to escape his grasp? Far, far away if Rapulana’s answer is any-thing to go by: “He gives Ayanda space to blow off steam. Then he tries his luck again. He is relentless and his bad-luck history with women doesn’t cross his mind. Tau doesn’t want to let Ayanda out of his sight. It doesn’t occur to him that maybe he’s the problem…”
THE TROUBLE WITH ME
When Tau focuses on something, he throws himself into it fully. Like with Ayanda now, he is going overboard to prove to her that she comes first in his life. “That is made all the more difficult for him because she has made up her mind,” reveals Rapulana, with the actor adding that “Ayanda is done with him. Working alongside someone who stabbed her in the heart has been difficult because she is second- guessing everything he says and does.”
While Tau rejects her quitting their partnership, Ayanda has told herself that enough is enough. She wasn’t good enough for him 20 years ago, so
what has changed now? But Ayanda isn’t realising that it’s not her – the problem is Tau himself. Years ago he was a wannabe-gangster trying to be a hotshot in the marketing world. At that time, there was only one name to be associated with in the industry: Moroka. “Tau believed that marrying Karabo would get him a seat at the adult table. It’s not that he didn’t love Karabo, but she is a Moroka and her family’s advertising company Ezweni was the biggest and best in the game. He needed the step up and Ayanda was a nobody back then,” explains Rapulana. Ayanda has inadvertently poured fuel on the fire by making every disagreement personal because her feelings have resurfaced and she feels insecure around him. Rapulana says that “Tau left her high and dry, so why shouldn’t she do that to him? She wants him to feel rejected and alone in the middle of one of his biggest- ever business deals as payback.”
BLAME GAME
Because he’s focused on his business and his love-life – and because he has an ego – Tau can’t stand back and see the overall picture. He is mean. He is driven. He has blinkers on. And he will never admit that the fault lies with him, explains Rapulana. “For Tau, he is never the bad guy. He is never at fault. He has this image of himself that he is perfect and that everything that goes wrong can be blamed on someone else.” But what happens on the day that he’s all alone in the world and there’s no one to blame but himself? Considering his behaviour in the boardroom and the bedroom, that day is fast approaching.