The Lead

A dozen former and current South African National Defence Force (SANDF) members are, as we speak, in police custody in connection with the murder of a senior Hawks detective. In 2023, Lieutenant Colonel Ngwako Frans Mathipa was shot and killed near Hammanskraal Toll Plaza. Mathipa was tasked with investigating an alleged abduction involving SANDF members as suspects. It’s alleged these elite soldi...

Deputy President Paul Mashatile’s sister-in-law has reason to celebrate. It has been revealed that Khumo Bogatsu’s company, Bellamont Gaming, is among the key shareholders of Sizekhaya Holdings, the company that has won one of the country’s most lucrative government tenders: the latest licence to operate the lottery. It is quite the politically-connected R180-billion jackpot if you ask us, but acc...

The way South Africa’s prosecutors go about extraditing the criminally accused from another country to face justice in a local court is currently under intense scrutiny. The crux of the matter is that in 2014, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruled in one particular case that only the country’s Justice Minister and not the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is allowed to make extradition reques...

Despite calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, the Middle Eastern nations have, in recent days, exchanged a volley of missile strikes, adding pressure to a very volatile geopolitical situation. Will America enter the fray, and can South Africa play peacemaker? News24 international correspondent Phillip de Wet provides his insights. Later in the show, we’ll tell you which of the GNU’s minis...

In 2024, News24’s Waste Land exposé uncovered the source of the Gauteng West Rand’s unbearable smell: the old Percy Stewart Wastewater Treatment Plant, which was illegally dumping untreated, heavily polluted water into the Blougatspruit, which feeds into the Hartbeespoort Dam downstream. This raw sewage, seeping into crucial water sources, farms and homes, threatened the livelihoods of everyone ar...

The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) continues in 2025 to push for some sort of historical accountability from “Dr Death” Wouter Basson’s involvement in the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare programme, “Project Coast”. But as News24’s Cape Town journalist Tammy Petersen reports in this edition of The Lead, the Durbanville-based cardiologist has, at the...

For decades, the forgotten, desolate sands of the coastal Namaqualand region of the Northern Cape have offered both illicit diggers and influential tycoons a chance at the big time. The promise of still-hidden diamonds beneath the hot soil has recently attracted all walks of life to a region whose people feed on the carcass of infrastructure left behind by the De Beers mining group. The veteran in...

A “smooth talker” who plied clients with fantastic food and drink, convincing many into handing over their precious millions, only to evade questions when it was time to cough up. This is how numerous clients have described the elusive Johannesburg investment broker, Mark Kretzschmar, to News24.Tonight in The Lead, News24 Business journalist Jan Cronjé tells us how Kretzschmar allegedly duped inve...

She’s a free woman. Moroadi Cholota, the former assistant to then-Free State Premier Ace Magashule, has won her special plea against the National Prosecuting Authority. The Free State High Court in Bloemfontein declared her extradition from the United States “unlawful” following a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that only the Justice Minister may request extradition. The ruling leaves the NPA with...

He took off his red beret to take up the spear. But the writing’s been on the wall for some time before the uMkhonto weSizwe Party on Tuesday booted Floyd Shivambu out of its secretary-general office and onto the benches in Parliament. “Floyd’s visit to (Shepherd Bushiri) in Malawi was an excuse they could find to take action against him,” says News24 political editor Andisiwe Makinana. She joins...

From a viral grade twelve pupil selling sweets every morning at the local taxi rank to attend his matric dance, to a young Ikeys rugby star who got a shock call-up from Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus, by the end of Tuesday’s discussion with Good News Editor Paul Herman in The Lead, we hope to leave you feeling extra inspired and proud to be a South African. Later in the show, host Graeme Raubenhei...

The Hawks’ Crimes Against the State unit (CATS) believe they’ve caught a suspected senior leader in the Islamic State terrorist network operating right out of Johannesburg’s inner city. 39-year-old Abubakar Ali appeared in the city’s magistrates court on Monday to apply for bail after he was arrested in Fordsburg on a charge of carrying an unlicensed firearm. The Lead host, Graeme Raubenheimer, cr...

Like most fake news these days, it all started with a friend’s WhatsApp message, sharing an article with the header: “Cape Town drivers to face congestion tax starting June 1st”. With a quick Google search, we found that the City of Cape Town had already rubbished this article as fake news. But when News24 Disinformation Desk Editor Andrew Thompson investigated the source of the article, he found...

It’s a mammoth legacy project critical to keeping the taps flowing in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and the rest of Gauteng well into the future. However, the tax costs associated with ensuring that phase two of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project goes as planned have ballooned exponentially. Given the Water and Sanitation Ministry’s history of immense wasteful spending in recent years, it’s not all tha...

The City of Gold that once shone brightly has been dumped into darkness. This is partly due to the city’s troubled electricity entity, City Power, which, according to an Auditor-General’s report, has been in deep financial trouble for several years. According to a report by Khaya Koko, an investigative journalist at News24, there are now serious concerns that the metro’s top leaders, like Mayor Da...

Remember those old yellow and grey Metrorail trains? The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) is shelling out billions of your tax money to refurbish them. But instead of ferrying people to and from work, they’re being left to rot in train stockyards across the country. News24 investigative journalist Sipho Masondo is pushing to figure out why PRASA is fixing the old trains but not utilis...

Unprecedented and historic scenes played out in the White House on Wednesday night when US President Donald Trump had a television rolled into the Oval Office, playing a video of EFF leader, Julius Malema, singing ‘Kill the Boer’ to drive home the claim of “white genocide” in South Africa. However, following lunch with Trump, champion golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, billionaires Elon Musk and...

It’s not a statement you would’ve seen two months ago. The Democratic Alliance on Wednesday said it’s “cautiously” supporting Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s Budget, albeit version 3.0. The latest iteration proposes, among other measures, spending cuts for education, health the Passenger Rail Agency (PRASA) while Treasury promises a significant overhaul of expenditure in future budgets. The SA...

Can they strike a deal? This is perhaps the big question on the lips of geopolitical and economic analysts as President Cyril Ramaphosa and US counterpart Donald Trump meet in Washington, DC, this week. Some South African products, like citrus and car parts, enjoyed duty-free access to the US market until the Trump administration implemented an unprecedented tariff regime. The meeting comes amid a...

He is languishing in a prison cell for an attempted hit on his former lover, and now the walls are closing in on tender don, Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Matlala, for a now cancelled R360-million SAPS health services tender allegedly unduly awarded to his company, Medicare 24 Tshwane District in 2024. Matlala’s bail proceedings on Monday in connection with allegedly orchestrating the failed attempt on actress T...

Youth unemployment, crumbling municipal infrastructure, persistent power cuts and escalating crime levels remain South Africa’s reality. Yet President Cyril Ramaphosa finds himself increasingly pulled into global conflict scenarios. In the aftermath of Ramaphosa labelling the first group of “Afrikaner refugees” leaving for the US on Sunday as “cowards” and “colonialists”, News24 assistant editor f...

President Cyril Ramaphosa described the first group of so-called “Afrikaner refugees”, who took up the US Trump Administration’s invitation to resettle in the states as “cowards” who’ll soon return to South Africa. The president surprised many South African farmers attending this week’s NAMPO agriculture expo in Bothaville in the Free State. Our man-on-the-beat there, Nick Wilson, doorstopped Rama...

Whatever you'd like to call them; the "49ers", the "Amerikaners", the "Afrikaner refugees", they've officially discarded Madiba's Rainbow Flag for Eisenhower's Stars and Stripes. Their departure, facilitated by the Trump Administration, has generated intense debate over the Afrikaners' place in this world. But for News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Bas...

The annals of SA/US relations are at a watershed. They’ll historically show that in early May 2025, after a run of public holidays celebrating South Africa’s hard-fought transition to democracy, the first group of Afrikaners took up the Trump Administration’s offer to relocate to the United States as official “refugees”. And they flew out of Gauteng for Virginia with not so much as a song or dance...

Between the headlines on disaster, corruption, and crime are stories that delight South Africans. In fact, some of the most read articles on News24 over the past month have been good news stories. News24’s Good News Editor Paul Herman talks to us about how a Kraaifontein man used his R350 grant to build a vegetable produce business, how budding Springbok star Siphosethu Mnebelele overcame the loss...