News24 The Lead

The Lead

Welcome to 'The Lead', a brand new, regular podcast from News24 showcasing the best of our in-depth reporting.

Through candid and honest conversations with our host Graeme Raubenheimer and News24's leading journalists, you'll gain insight into what they saw, heard and uncovered in the pursuit of the big story.

Send us your views, news, and voice notes to thelead@24.com. Live on News24, Spotify, Apple & YouTube, Monday to Thursday at 19:00.
Weekly English South Africa News · Society & Culture
48 Episodes
1 – 20

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

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

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

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
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