The Lead

The hit on a top Johannesburg insolvency lawyer has reverberated throughout the country’s legal fraternity. Now, while the police attempt to arrest the gunmen who so brazenly snuffed out Bouwer van Niekerk’s life last Friday, details are slowly emerging about the multimillion-rand cryptocurrency trading fund that he was engaged with. Kyle Cowan, our senior investigative journalist, is piecing this...

Welcome to the 100th episode of The Lead on News24, hosted by broadcast journalist Graeme Raubenheimer. First, we’ll reflect on the moment with our proud editor-in-chief, Adriaan Basson. Then, in our top story: from Johann Rupert to the DA, we are aware of the most notable South African figures who’ve visited the White House to consult with the Trump Administration amid souring Pretoria-Washington...

The North West province appears to be the wild, wild west these days. The audit reports for most municipalities in this often-forgotten province make for painful reading as critical service delivery has ground to a halt in many towns. Including the city of Mahikeng, where, despite this grim reality, managers recently walked away with a fat bonus. This, while armed gunmen have effectively taken ove...

It’s a story so out of left field and certainly not one we had on our bingo card for 2025! The Hawks, our supposedly elite crime-fighting unit, which is currently severely underpowered, have come out in strong defence of their investigation of fairly well-known local social media content creator Anton Taylor. The story, broken last week by our specialist legal journalist, Karyn Maughan, revealed t...

It’s been a national talking point these past few weeks thanks to our intrepid investigative journalist, Sikonathi Mantshantsha, who’s refusing to take his foot off the pedal when it comes to the numerous allegations of dodgy payments to the tune of billions at the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA).First came revelations that the agency awarded a company many millions to lease out a...

South Africa’s Springbok Women celebrated this weekend like never before with a truly historic win: their first triumph over Italy and their very first time reaching the Women’s Rugby World Cup quarterfinals, currently under way in England. It all came down to the wire with a nail-biting 29-24 victory over the Italians in the city of York on Sunday. The Springbok Women have come a long way since t...

It was all meant to get under way in Pretoria in the new week, but the Madlanga inquiry has been delayed, seemingly due to factors out of its control. We’ve since heard from Minister Mmamaloko Kubayi that she’s suspended her department’s director-general, advocate Doc Mashabane, and his deputy, Jabu Hlatshwayo, for failing to ensure the commission had adequate information and communication technol...

State-owned arms manufacturer Denel, known for developing world-renowned defence weaponry, including the Casspir armoured vehicle and the Rooivalk attack helicopter, has been battling to stay financially afloat in recent years, despite government bailouts. And now a jet deal it struck with a US firm has seemingly soured, too. Bringing The Lead this exclusive story today is business journalist Jan...

It’s a fairly obscure government agency, but with a big budget. And now a News24 investigation led by journalist Sikonathi Mantshantsha has spurred the finance minister to appoint a new acting CEO at the state pensions administration agency. This follows evidence uncovered of irregular contracts, including a ghost building lease and ICT deals to the tune of R1.6 billion, and staff targeted for spe...

It has been under national administration. And yet the financial books for the metro council in charge of Bloemfontein, Mangaung, remain firmly in the red. In short, the City’s liabilities exceed its assets. News24 investigative journalist Sipho Masondo reports to The Lead that the troubled council has allowed a culture of staff excessively billing for overtime. Even if said staffer is in prison!...

Some US lawmakers remain relentless in drafting new legislation that seeks to punish South Africa on a range of policy fronts, going further than the measures already brought by the second Trump administration. The latest Bilateral Relations Review Bill, sponsored by a Texas Republican congressman, Ronny Jackson, will need plenty of support to make it past both legislative houses in the States, ho...

This Saturday, 23 August 2025, marks exactly four years to the day since Babita Deokaran, a single mother, was murdered. Gunned down in a hail of bullets fired from the firearms of hired hitmen, what we didn’t know at the time was that the Gauteng health department’s chief accountant had just recently internally flagged and frozen some R100 million in payments emanating from Tembisa Hospital. Soon...

It’s a critical position in the now crumbling City of Johannesburg: a mayoral committee member for group corporate and shared services. It may sound a bit vague. But in this seat, you’re responsible for finance management, the city’s IT infrastructure, and supply chain processes. And it’s now occupied by one, Mr Sithembiso Zungu. He’s an ANC politician who has anything but quietly climbed the poli...

A new report, put out by a research centre at Stellenbosch University, has now exposed a Poland-based news group called Visegrád24 for amplifying the views of alt-right commentators and their false narratives and mistruths about what’s happening in South Africa today. The report, authored by the university’s Centre for Information Integrity in Africa, has also drawn links between Visegrád24 and Po...

It seems like anyone can become South Africa’s foreign policy spokesperson these days. Just ask the chief of our defence force. South African National Defence Force chief General Rudzani Maphwanya jetted off to Tehran this week to meet with his Iranian counterpart and, quite astonishingly, spoke like the country’s foreign minister. And now our actual international relations minister, Ronald Lamola...

R1.47bn. This is how much the government has spent on protecting its VIPs from the 2020/21 financial year to date. And it’s not even the full picture of the cost. It’s especially mind-boggling, given that around R2.3bn has been set aside just this year alone to keep VIPs safe. To make sense of the numbers for The Lead, we’re joined in our Cape Town studio by our senior parliamentary journalist, Ja...

The game of thrones, with its political musical chairs for coalition maneuvering now even has smaller parties pitted amongst each other in the government of local unity in the City of Johannesburg where local service delivery has suffered and urban decay has set in, in more recent years. Central to the latest bout of inter-political unhappiness is a long-winded investigation into an alleged device...

Another day, another allegedly dodgy case involving a lesser-known state agency. This time, News24’s investigations team has uncovered evidence that the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) has issued millions to a company to facilitate its new headquarters in the capital, Pretoria. Yet contractor Shula Developers has not secured the lease to step foot in the building. Are we being dup...

He’s a mostly quiet but key former policy mind for the ANC. However, Joel Netshitenzhe is now picking up where former US ambassador Ebrahim Rasool left off. Now with the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, or Mistra for short – the same think-tank that facilitated a webinar at which Rasool uttered controversial comments about US President Donald Trump, Netshitenzhe echoed much of Rasool...

The government of national unity (GNU) is MIA. And it’s not unified in the nation’s interests - it’s every man or woman for themselves. This is the opinion of one former DA leader-turned-ambassador, Tony Leon, who argues that SA’s current crop of leaders is failing the perfect storm test as we barrel toward Trump’s tariffs sans a senior diplomat in Washington. And what does he think about the Inde...

We’re edging ever closer to becoming one of the few countries in the world to bear the full brunt of the US Trump administration’s 30% tariff slap. Can a last-minute phone call from President Cyril Ramaphosa curry favour and land a new US/SA trade deal? Business journalist William Brederode and The Lead host Graeme Raubenheimer are holding their breaths. For now, the pair discuss how the tariffs i...

It may mean “place of peace”. But the City of Ekurhuleni has been on edge this year following the murder of its chief auditor, Mpho Mafole. The soon-to-be married financial investigator was shot and killed not far from his Kempton Park home in late June. Mafole, a former staffer in the Auditor-General’s office, was only three months on the job in Ekurhuleni. And he is most certainly not the first...

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”.If you haven’t read Animal Farm, that’s one of author George Orwell’s most famous quotes and it has never rung truer in the South African context than today, 31 July 2025.As we wait for the Madlanga Inquiry’s first public hearings into alleged police criminal capture, the man at the centre of KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mk...

An independent investigation into a massive government-sanctioned tender to provide 60 of our country’s hospitals with critical medical-grade oxygen has exposed many serious red flags throughout the procurement process. The DA’s Public Works and Infrastructure Minister in the government of national unity (GNU), Dean Macpherson, launched an investigation into alleged corruption within the state age...

It must be super lekker to be the deputy president. During the week, you can live it up in your Waterfall mansion in Midrand. And on the weekends, you can cruise down to Slaapstad to lounge by the pool in your Constantia palace. Both these properties have now been formally and publicly declared by Deputy President Paul Mashatile to Parliament, vindicating a long-standing media investigation led by...