The Lead

In this edition of The Lead with Graeme Raubenheimer, we assess the immediate aftermath of the June 30th anti-immigration marches with News24’s deputy politics editor, Bongekile Macupe, and Durban journalist, Sakhiseni Nxumalo. Macupe witnessed firsthand how pockets of violence took over the mass demonstration in Johannesburg, while Nxumalo observed a largely peaceful “March and March” led through...

With the clock ticking on the 30 June “deadline” set by anti-migrant groups, will peace prevail as marchers take to the streets this Tuesday? With so many foreigners queuing up in Durban and other parts of the country, to somehow find a way home, what happens then when this cutoff comes and goes? We try to make sense of it all with our KwaZulu-Natal-based journalist, Sakhiseni Nxumalo, who witness...

In a preview for the November municipal polls, the people of Beverly Hills in Evaton in the Vaal municipal district of Emfuleni are voting for a new ward councillor this Wednesday. This outcome may not change much, though, argues roving journalist Ntwagaae Seleka, because the service delivery crisis throughout Emfuleni has only worsened in recent months. Rubbish piles are only getting higher, sewa...

In this edition, The Lead returns to the Bellville South house of horrors with News24 court and crime journalist, Lisalee Solomons. She reports that 63-year-old Aletta Rose, the murder convict accused of decapitating her Cape Town sister in March, has been giving court and remand prison authorities a headache. Rose, who now wants bail, doesn't like the media's cameras snapping pictures of...

The licence to operate the Lotto is about to change hands to Sizekhaya Holdings, not without claims of alleged misconduct by those left out of the ultra-lucrative tender. The man steering that outfit is Moses Tembe, a figure who's in business with at least three others precariously close to Deputy President Paul Mashatile. So much so that Tembe got a personal invite to this year's opening...

President Cyril Ramaphosa reckons he's got a fair chance of challenging an independent panel's findings that he may have broken the law in relation to the 2020 theft of a large sum of money from a couch based at his Phala Phala game lodge. But this “Section 89” report, overseen by retired chief justice Sandile Ngcobo, is not the only one Ramaphosa should be worried about. In this edition o...

We kick off this news week with two more senior police figures in the dock, this time facing serious charges in connection with a peculiar unwrought gold bust at OR Tambo International Airport about five years ago. Major Generals Feroz Khan and Ebrahim Kadwa, and security company boss Tariq Downes, have all since been granted bail, reports News24's Tankiso Makhetha. Makhetha has found that Dow...

The City of Gold is bankrupt. And don't take our word for it, the finance minister says so! Enoch Godongwana has even instructed Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero to halt a R10 billion wage hike for municipal workers, a move that may come back to bite the beleaguered administration. Here, in this edition, with all the details of Godongwana's naughty letter to Morero is News24 metro journo, Al...

From one Limpopo company charging up to R19 000 for a teaching aid that may only cost R200, to a completely unknown publishing house based out of a Simons Town cottage that was handed 26% of the pie. Glaring problems have since emerged in the Basic Education Department's approvals, amounting to R1.6 billion, for the publication of new learning materials for grades one to three. Here, in this e...

In the past two weeks, News24's eagle-eyed journos have uncovered evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) conjured up incorrect and misleading sources in two critical pieces of proposed government policy, one of which concerns the use of AI itself. The revelations have led to the suspension of top officials, and the DA, overseeing the two ministries where the policies were crafted, is enfor...

Is Johannesburg's vacant, derelict civic centre the ultimate monument for the metro's perceived legacy of poor service delivery? Well, a recent inspection by DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille has re-exposed the centre's long-standing problems, like its piles of unprocessed archive files and building plans gathering mould. This didn't happen overnight, though, as News24's Alex Pa...

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has set the cat among the pigeons in Mzansi’s news media world this week. The SIU red-flagged more than half a million rand from the National Lotteries Commission, which in 2018 found its way to a communications company formerly belonging to the current Sunday Times editor and South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) chair Makhudu Sefara. But as Sefara ste...

A global Chinese construction giant and its staff overseeing a gargantuan wind and solar farm in the Karoo are facing mounting allegations of not only breaches of health and safety regulations, but also environmental violations, and even sexual harassment. Specialist climate journalist, Ethan van Diemen, has spent many months investigating the tsunami of claims swirling around Sinohydro's Oya Hybr...

He's been close to the notorious “Cat” before. And now he'll be even closer to alleged criminal tender don Vusimusi Matlala, as they share the same prison in Pretoria ahead of their respective trials. Facing unlawful firearm possession and obstruction of justice charges, suspended police sergeant Fannie Nkosi has now been denied bail. And our journalist, Tankiso Makhetha, explains the reas...

It's a multibillion-rand solar panel farm, said to be the most ambitious of its kind on African soil, all to boost our rehabilitated energy grid. Yet, in her investigations, News24 journalist Azarrah Karrim has unearthed a series of alleged red flags in the Chinese state company-led construction of the Virginia Solar Park, a two-hour drive from Bloemfontein. From alleged B-BBEE fronting to cla...

He led Mzansi's newest green party to fifth place in the 2021 municipal polls, so the question is: what will it take for Herman Mashaba's ActionSA to do it again in 2026? The founder of Black Like Me is our guest this Newsmaker Thursday on News24's The Lead. Mashaba insists that ActionSA is the only party growing its councillor base by attracting smaller parties to defect without havin...

They met behind closed doors on the sidelines of the News24 On the Record Summit in Cape Town in March, and now we finally know the outcome. President Cyril Ramaphosa is deploying former constitutional affairs minister Roelf Meyer to Washington, D.C., to try and salvage what's left of US/SA ties. We've roped in News24's investigations editor and fellow history buff, Pieter du Toit, to...

Fraudulent payments? Missing municipal funds? Bribes to wipe service providers' debt? Forty-year-old mother of one, Martha Mani Rantsofu, was no ordinary junior finance clerk in Gauteng's Emfuleni Local Municipality, because by our accounts, she was a whistleblower knocking on some dangerous doors. While the Gauteng Political Killings Task Team takes a closer look at her hit, News24 journa...

The DA led a landmark elective congress this past weekend, leaving it with an introspective question. In this new Geordin Hill-Lewis era, can the party shed its perceived stigma of being a 20% party, mostly for whites? We'll take stock with our acting political editor, Carol Paton, who's been following the DA campaign trail in Soweto this Monday. Later in our trending topic, was the motive...

He thought: What have I got to lose? Let me take on the man widely tipped to lead the DA next. In this edition, The Lead host Graeme Raubenheimer picks Sibusiso Dyonase's brain on his 15-year journey in the DA, who he looks up to, and why challenging Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis for the top spot is so critical, politically speaking. And then Raubenheimer gauges who's who and running...

“In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift – a more human face.”Who said that? The late great Steve Biko, of course. But you may be a little disheartened to hear that Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement may be, to some extent, less of a focus in future school history studies, if the Basic Education Ministry's proposed revision of the history curr...

He may not be your average police sergeant. Fannie Nkosi, who this Tuesday appeared before a Pretoria magistrate on several criminal charges, has been revealed to be a critical cog in how organised criminals communicated with the SAPS’ alleged bad apples. Then there's this intriguing tiff between EFF leader Julius Malema and deputy PA leader, Kenny Kunene, over claims Malema was too close to a...

When it comes to global corruption indicators, South Africa continues to languish in the red, according to NGO Corruption Watch, as local efforts to drive out rampant graft and improve our world ranking have only stagnated in more recent years. Enter lifestyle audits for public office bearers. They're supposed to reveal any inconsistencies between what a state official earns and their actual s...

If you're desperate for some good news this April, you've come to the correct place. From a 6-year-old author with three books to her name, to a fitness coach who gave a group of boys the opportunity to witness the Bafana Bafana match-up live in Cape Town. These are among a few of the inspiring stories editor Paul Herman and The Lead host Graeme Raubenheimer discuss in their yearly Good Ne...

This Tuesday, News24 fielded numerous reports of petrol stations across Mzansi shutting shop and turning away motorists desperate to fill up ahead of the staggering fuel price increases at midnight. Despite government slashing the fuel price levy this April, you and I will still be digging deep to pay an extra more than R3 per litre for petrol, and an eye-watering more than R7 per litre for diesel...