News24 The Lead

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

Loading player...
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 Johann Rupert, President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted to reporters that: “There’s doubt and disbelief in his (Trump’s) head,” about this false narrative. In this very special edition of The Lead, host Graeme Raubenheimer, News24 editor-in-chief, Adriaan Basson, assistant editor for investigations, Pieter du Toit, and deputy business editor, Ahmed Areff, dissect the standoff between the heads of state and where it leaves South Africa as a country. Who was the best speaker in the room? How do we tackle crime back home? And where does it leave the right wing? Basson says maybe it’s time to “reset South Africa”. Mail your comments and voice notes to thelead@24.com. Editions drop Monday through Thursday at 19:00 on Spotify, Apple and YouTube.  
22 May English South Africa News · Society & Culture

Other recent episodes

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
All episodes