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PODCAST

The Lead

Seasoned broadcast journalist Graeme Raubenheimer brings you The Lead, News24’s definitive podcast for in-depth reporting. Join us every Monday to Thursday at 19:00 SAST for candid conversations with our top journalists, and discover what they saw, heard, and uncovered in their relentless pursuit of the big story. Episodes drop on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube like clockwork. WhatsApp: 072 562 3179 or mail: thelead@24.com. This is The Lead, and this is the South African story.

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All Episodes

28:01

Iran, Israel conflict explained

The Lead ·

2025/06/18

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 ministers are the most frequent flyers and biggest international tax spenders. And was there a lion on the

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34:48

Streets of sewage and a ray of light in Krugersdorp,...

The Lead ·

2025/06/12

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 around these crucial river conduits. After News24’s reporting and Mogale City pumping millions of rands

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21:18

Wouter Basson vs HPCSA round two, with Tammy Petersen

The Lead ·

2025/06/11

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 The Lead, the Durbanville-based cardiologist has, at the age of 74, turned to the High Court to get the HPCSA off his back once and for all: “Dr Basson argues

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40:48

The bloody diamond war in Namaqualand with Jacques...

The Lead ·

2025/06/10

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 investigative journalist Jacques Pauw has returned from the Namaqualand with tales contained in a series

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30:01

Meet the Jozi broker who disappeared with millions...

The Lead ·

2025/06/09

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 Jan Cronjé tells us how Kretzschmar allegedly duped investors, including family friends and discusses the litany of charges he faces. Later in the show, we look at

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34:41

Has the NPA messed up again? Karyn Maughan on why Ace...

The Lead ·

2025/06/05

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 a bloody nose, and many legal experts have warned that this trial-within-a-trial may have far-reaching

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29:43

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

The Lead ·

2025/06/04

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 they could find to take action against him,” says News24 political editor Andisiwe Makinana who joins us in the studio to discuss what this shift means for Shivambu’s political prospects. Later in the show, South

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25:17

Selling sweets to pay for matric ball and May’s best...

The Lead ·

2025/06/03

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 Lead, we hope to leave you feeling extra inspired and proud to be a South African. Later in the show, host Graeme Raubenheimer discusses controversial Gauteng tenderpreneur Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala who abandoned his bid for bail in

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18:20

Suspected ISIS SA leader appears in a Joburg court,...

The Lead ·

2025/06/02

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 charge of carrying an unlicensed firearm. The Lead host, Graeme Raubenheimer, crosses to News24’s Tankiso Makhetha in court, who tells us why the case has been postponed to 11 June when

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37:15

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

The Lead ·

2025/05/29

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 a whole lot more than he bargained for. An Indian digital agency was using hijacked South African

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20:17

From Lesotho to Emfuleni, securing SA’s precious...

The Lead ·

2025/05/28

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 that surprising. As News24’s Climate Editor Lameez Omarjee reports, yet another investigation into our

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30:31

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

The Lead ·

2025/05/27

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 Dada Morero, are allegedly hiding the extent of the problem from the council. Koko writes that City Power

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28:12

Derailed - how Prasa fixes trains and then leave them...

The Lead ·

2025/05/26

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 utilising them: “When former Prasa executives sent this memo to the former minister, Fikile Mbalula, Prasa was

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54:04

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

The Lead ·

2025/05/22

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

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26:03

Budget cuts, a fuel levy increase and SA’s debt...

The Lead ·

2025/05/21

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 Revenue Services (SARS) is also getting a big chunk of the budget to assist in plugging the revenue

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22:18

Deal or no deal? Ramaphosa ready for Trump

The Lead ·

2025/05/20

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 an unprecedented push to lure more South African farmers to the US under the guise of a controversial

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22:15

Has Vusi ‘Cat’ Matlala run out of lives? Jeff Wicks...

The Lead ·

2025/05/19

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 Tebogo Thobejane’s life in 2023 have been postponed to 30 May. In the meantime, officials with the

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24:27

Is Ramaphosa wasting his time with Trump? With Pieter...

The Lead ·

2025/05/15

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 for investigations Pieter du Toit reckons the president’s tour to Washington DC next week could prove to

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17:45

NAMPO farmers tell Nick Wilson they’re staying

The Lead ·

2025/05/14

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 Ramaphosa, who was shopping, in his capacity as a fellow farmer. Ramaphosa told Wilson of the “refugees’”

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29:44

'I am an Afrikaner', with Adriaan Basson

The Lead ·

2025/05/13

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 never been more crystal clear. One is that he’s certain of his heritage: “I consider myself an Afrikaner. I identify as an Afrikaner

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134 results

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