EDITORIAL | Beware the politics of election season

Only naïve observers would have thought that the DA’s opponents would let a good crisis go to waste. After all, this is election season.

On Thursday and Friday, the ANC and Jacob Zuma’s MKP laid criminal charges against DA finance chief Mark Burke . The charges relate to a fight between a company he co-founded with his brother Nicholas and the Reserve Bank.

Business Day broke the story of the latter’s explosive affidavit last week .

The two parties have since called on Burke, who served on parliament’s finance oversight committees, to resign.

Burke, who is no longer a director of Kastelo, the fintech company, has since recused himself from the finance committees that also oversee the work of the central bank.

Initially, the DA appeared to want to ride out the critical barrage and stand by Burke, a first-time member of parliament. But the party then relented as pressure grew on it to act.

Its initial stance, communicated by deputy finance minister Ashor Sarupen, also the DA’s federal council chair, was based on Burke declaring his association with the company last October, and since stepping down. In addition, he says he has not attended any of the meetings at which the Bank was presenting.

Party president Geordin Hill-Lewis, according to reporting from TimesLive , would then intervene.

The furore around Kastelo only surfaced in the public domain earlier this year when the Bank acted against the company over alleged violations of the country’s foreign exchange regulations. This followed disclosures by the Bank’s surveillance unit and whistleblower accounts over cryptocurrency transactions by the company.

Still, this didn’t stop parties, including the ANC, which is the DA’s partner in the government of national unity, from turning this crisis in the blue party into a political football. Even the MKP, which has a cavalier attachment to rule of law principles, joined the bandwagon.

The remedial steps undertaken by Burke and his party will not stop parties from milking this issue. The DA wouldn’t waste it either. And it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.

The party is also planning to lay criminal charges against the municipal managers of the worst-performing councils run by its partner in the GNU, the ANC.

Politics aside, it is important to bring a sober perspective to the issue.

First, it is worth noting that Burke hasn’t been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. There is no case for him to be sacked from parliament. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that parliament, through the ethics committee, its watchdog, shouldn’t investigate any ethical lapses on his part.