The Lead

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

There’s more than enough good news to go around, here are News24’s best stories

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…

8 May 30 min

The ‘Sheriff of Cape Town’s’ case against the police and courts

He’s sometimes referred to as the “Sheriff of Cape Town”. A senior DA politician who’s occupied a top City post for 16 years. The City’s Safety and Security Mayoral Committee Member, JP Smith, is challenging the validity of a SAPS raid on his city council offices in January, claiming it…

7 May 23 min

Families, survivors commemorate the George building collapse one year on

Considered one of South Africa’s deadliest construction disasters, May 6, 2025, marks a year since 34 people were killed in the George residential building collapse in the Western Cape. As their families, friends and the 28 survivors pause to hold a memorial, justice in the wake of evidence of poor…

6 May 17 min

Zero accountability in Joburg cleaning tender saga

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the City of Johannesburg's Property Company entity shelled out more than R18 million in what's understood to be inflated payments, all for deep cleaning and sanitation at its premises. The Special Investigating Unit soon smelled a rat. Still, the entity's CEO, Helen Botes,…

5 May 24 min

Tabling Budget 3.0 with Carol Paton

A whole new Budget 3.0 aims to include everyone's proper buy-in and you won't be taxed more on most goods you buy. But the DA and EFF's recent court case scrapping Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana's proposed VAT increase of 0.5% percentage points means that it's also back to the drawing…

30 Apr 23 min

Exposing X-Boer, the ex-farmer in Elon Musk’s ear

On 'X', he goes by the name ‘Twatterbaas’, and his messages have attracted the attention of Elon Musk and, thus, the Trump Administration. Regularly, the anonymous account posts racist tropes and promotes selective views that have reinforced misinformation about South Africa. But now we know who is behind the account:…

29 Apr 37 min

The Mashatile ‘hit’ that wasn’t, with Kyle Cowan

Was South Africa's deputy president, Paul Mashatile, the recent target of an attempted assassination? If sources close to a SAPS ballistics report are anything to go by, the answer to that question may be a resounding no. In tonight’s episode, we discuss with News24 journalist Kyle Cowan what our team…

24 Apr 35 min

Debunking Malema and Trump with Andrew Thompson

EFF leader Julius Malema alleges it's a lie that there are farm killings in South Africa. Among other claims, Malema suggests that white people are not murdered in South Africa. The politician's April statements in Parliament in response to the Trump Administration’s US aid pullout were shared on social media…

23 Apr 30 min

The police chief, the Cat and corruption with Jeff Wicks

South African Police Service (SAPS) top brass dragged their feet in cancelling a tender awarded to a businessman known as "The Cat". News24 specialist investigative journalist Jeff Wicks combed through an internal audit report. In it, he found that tender tycoon Vusimusi "Cat" Matlala should've never scored a R360 million…

22 Apr 17 min