The Lead

Streets of sewage and a ray of light in Krugersdorp, with Sikonathi Mantshantsha

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…

12 Jun 34 min

Wouter Basson vs HPCSA round two, with Tammy Petersen

The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) continues in 2025 to push for some form 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…

11 Jun 21 min

The bloody diamond war in Namaqualand with Jacques Pauw (special edition)

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…

10 Jun 40 min

Meet the Jozi broker who disappeared with millions from friends, family and clients

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 described the elusive Johannesburg investment broker, Mark Kretzschmar, to News24.Tonight in The Lead, News24 Business journalist…

9 Jun 30 min

Has the NPA messed up again? Karyn Maughan on why Ace Magashule’s PA walked free

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…

5 Jun 34 min

Bye-bye Floyd - why MK speared Shivambu as SG, with Andisiwe Makinana

He took off his red beret to take up the spear. But the writing’s been on the wall for some time before the MK Party  booted Floyd Shivambu out of its secretary-general office on Tuesday and onto the benches in Parliament. “Floyd’s visit to [Shepherd Bushiri] in Malawi was an excuse…

4 Jun 29 min

Selling sweets to pay for matric ball and May’s best good news stories

From a viral Grade 12 pupil selling sweets every morning at a 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…

3 Jun 25 min

Suspected ISIS SA leader appears in a Joburg court, with Tankiso Makhetha

The Hawks’ Crimes Against the State unit believe they’ve caught a suspected senior leader in the Islamic State terrorist network operating right out of Johannesburg’s inner city.  Abubakar Ali (39) appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday to apply for bail after he was arrested in Fordsburg on a…

2 Jun 18 min

News24 finds ‘hornet’s nest’ of fake news, with Andrew Thompson

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…

29 May 37 min

From Lesotho to Emfuleni, securing SA’s precious water sources

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…

28 May 20 min

Johannesburg’s R16.3bn blackhole, with Khaya Koko

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…

27 May 30 min

Derailed - how Prasa fixes trains and then leave them to rot, with Sipho Masondo

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…

26 May 28 min

Special edition: Trump vs Ramaphosa with News24’s top editors

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…

22 May 54 min

Budget cuts, a fuel levy increase and SA’s debt crisis, with Carol Paton

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…

21 May 26 min

Deal or no deal? Ramaphosa ready for Trump

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…

20 May 22 min

Has Vusi ‘Cat’ Matlala run out of lives? Jeff Wicks on his arrest and tender trouble

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…

19 May 22 min

Is Ramaphosa wasting his time with Trump? With Pieter du Toit

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”,…

15 May 24 min

NAMPO farmers tell Nick Wilson they’re staying

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…

14 May 17 min

'I am an Afrikaner', with Adriaan Basson

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 Basson, two things have…

13 May 29 min

The first ‘Amerikaners’ leave SA, with Alex Mitchley

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…

12 May 21 min