The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) notes that the South African Reserve Bank has a filed affidavit alleging that Kastelo, a fintech company founded and chaired by Democratic Alliance (DA) MP and federal finance chairperson Mark Burke, systematically circumvented South Africa’s exchange control regulations to externalise approximately R4 billion.

According to the Reserve Bank’s affidavit, Kastelo used clients’ single discretionary allowances and foreign investment allowances without their full knowledge, opened offshore bank accounts in their names that many clients were reportedly unaware of, and misrepresented its business activities in compliance declarations submitted to the central bank.

The allegations are not mere administrative or regulatory infringements. They describe the constituent elements of financial crime: the unauthorised use of other people’s money and identities, the deliberate concealment of offshore accounts from the very clients whose allowances were used to open them, and the deception of the central bank about what the business was actually doing. The Reserve Bank has already frozen a portion of Kastelo’s funds held with Access Bank, and a broader investigation is ongoing.

Burke sits on the DA’s federal executive as its finance chairperson, the position responsible for the internal financial controls and accountability of the country’s second-largest party and its fundraising machinery. He also currently sits in Parliament as a Member of the National Assembly, serving on the Standing Committee on Appropriations and as an alternate member of the Standing Committee on Finance, committees directly responsible for overseeing how public money is spent and accounted for in this country. The DA has spent years marketing itself to South Africans as the party of clean governance, competent management, and financial discipline. That brand does not survive contact with the DA’s own record as the Auditor-General’s own findings on the City of Cape Town, the DA’s flagship municipality and the largest municipal budget in the province at R76.83 billion, regressed during the 2024-25 financial year. The Auditor-General attributes this regression to weak procurement controls and inadequate review processes in tender administration, demonstrating that even the DA’s showcase municipality is vulnerable to the same procurement weaknesses that plague municipalities across the country.

The report reveals that procurement and contract management failures remain widespread throughout the Western Cape. 83% of municipalities in the province failed to comply with procurement legislation, while irregular expenditure increased from R1.23 billion in 2020-21 to R1.79 billion in 2024-25. Over the term of the administration, municipalities in the province accumulated R4.68 billion in irregular expenditure, with 99% of this amount resulting from procurement and contract management failures.

The allegations against Burke therefore expose a far deeper political issue for the DA. The conclusion that the EFF therefore reaches is simple: if a senior DA leader can be associated with a business facing serious financial crime allegations in its dealings with clients who entrusted it with their money, South Africans cannot hold confidence in his and his party’s political leadership to put the interests of ordinary citizens first when entrusted with public resources. What has happened in the City of Cape Town is likely to become widespread under their leadership.

This is also why the DA’s ideological commitment to privatising and commercialising municipal services must be viewed with suspicion. If the DA believes that essential services such as water, electricity, sanitation, and waste management should increasingly be subjected to private commercial interests, then ordinary South Africans are effectively being asked to place their most basic needs in the hands of entities whose primary responsibility is not to citizens, but to their commercial interests.

When public services are privatised, people cease to be treated primarily as citizens with rights and increasingly become customers from whom revenue must be generated. The provision of water, electricity, and other essential services becomes an opportunity for profit rather than a public responsibility. This is what voters must keep in mind as we edge closer the November 4 elections.

The EFF demands that this investigation into Kastelo be pursued to its full conclusion, including referral for criminal prosecution, with no special treatment afforded because of Burke’s political position.