Burke to stay on as DA finance chief after Kastelo court ruling

Pressure from within the DA and mounting media scrutiny are believed to have forced the party to back down and remove its federal finance chair, Mark Burke, from parliament’s finance committee and the DA finance cluster.

However, the view in the upper echelons of the DA is that there is no basis, in terms of the party’s constitution, to ask Burke to step aside as its finance chief, as he has not been charged by the DA federal legal commission.

At least two insiders this week indicated that party leader Geordin Hill-Lewis and federal council chair Ashor Sarupen had initially intended to defend Burke when the party’s federal executive met, until it became clear that an overwhelming number of its leaders were expected to call for his resignation on Wednesday night.

Hill-Lewis initially defended Burke after it emerged last week Monday that the company he founded and previously chaired, Kastelo, lost a high court battle in late July against the South African Reserve Bank to overturn a blocking order on its Access Bank account.

A day later, on Tuesday, Burke and Sarupen issued a joint statement denying any wrongdoing . Sarupen said there was no finding against Burke that would justify the DA treating him as though one had already been made.

But one insider said that as internal pressure grew, Hill-Lewis summoned Burke to respond to the allegations on Wednesday after realising he was facing a “PR nightmare”.

A second insider said: “Geordin needs to be campaigning. If he is out doing work for the party, the only topic the media is interested in talking about is Burke. We can’t afford that level of scrutiny at this moment. It was either the party will suffer because of alliances or Burke must step down. That was the position that would have been taken by the Gauteng federal executive committee had Geordin failed to act before the meeting.”

The insider, who is also an MP, said protecting Burke would have damaged Hill-Lewis in the caucus, which was still wary of the party leader after his predecessor, John Steenhuisen, was removed from the cabinet.

Burke and Hill-Lewis had not responded at the time of publication to questions sent to them on Friday.

At the same time, ANC chief whip Mdumiseni Ntuli said Burke’s stepping down from parliament’s finance committee was not the end of the matter, arguing that he must still answer to its ethics committee.

Ntuli said the ANC had written to National Assembly speaker Thoko Didiza calling for Burke to be referred to the ethics committee.

“He remains a member of parliament and therefore still has an obligation to answer to the ethics committee, in our view,” Ntuli said. “What is his side of the story and knowledge of what has been ventilated in the court, and how has that impacted on his conduct and on his commitment to the ethics and standards set out by parliament?”

Ntuli said the ANC was waiting for the speaker to respond. “We would expect her to respond within the next week about what action she is intending to take.”

He defended the ANC’s decision to open a criminal case this week, saying the party could not simply wait for other investigations to conclude.