Minister Simelane, Vitrovian and the Kusile cash grab

Loading player...
Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane is in hot water, again. On Monday, News24's investigations team revealed that the minister bagged a cool R700 000 from an Eskom contractor for an invoice she signed off on in 2011. Vitrovian, an ANC-linked company, scored more than R300 million from Eskom over seven years using inflated invoices." The entire contract... the entire Vitrovian situation should have never happened in the first place. It shouldn't have existed," says News24’s senior investigative journalist Kyle Cowan. In our latest edition of The Lead, Cowan details how Simelane pocketed tax rands and whether the Special Investigating Unit is any closer to finalising its multifaceted probe into Eskom corruption. Later, we focus on how the government of national unity's testy internal negotiations to pass a budget dragged on. And finally, from her old Opel to her Bajaj Qute, Helen Zille prefers to keep her rides budget friendly.
Chapters
  • 00:01 Graeme's intro
  • 01:45 Interview with Kyle Cowan
  • 28:41 Trending topic: GNU budget talks
  • 29:54 And finally: Zille's motoring moments
  • 31:02 Graeme's outro
31 Mar 2025 English South Africa News · Society & Culture

Other recent episodes

Return to the Bellville South house of horrors

In this edition, The Lead returns to the Bellville South house of horrors with News24 court and crime journalist, Lisalee Solomons. She reports that 63-year-old Aletta Rose, the murder convict accused of decapitating her Cape Town sister in March, has been giving court and remand prison authorities a headache. Rose, who now…
20 May 26 min

PowerBall? The lotto king’s curious business ties

The licence to operate the Lotto is about to change hands to Sizekhaya Holdings, not without claims of alleged misconduct by those left out of the ultra-lucrative tender. The man steering that outfit is Moses Tembe, a figure who's in business with at least three others precariously close to Deputy…
18 May 39 min

Your ultimate Phala Phala couch catch-up

President Cyril Ramaphosa reckons he's got a fair chance of challenging an independent panel's findings that he may have broken the law in relation to the 2020 theft of a large sum of money from a couch based at his Phala Phala game lodge. But this “Section 89” report, overseen…
13 May 33 min

OR Tambo gold bust haunts SAPS major generals. Plus: Cape storm wrap

We kick off this news week with two more senior police figures in the dock, this time facing serious charges in connection with a peculiar unwrought gold bust at OR Tambo International Airport about five years ago. Major Generals Feroz Khan and Ebrahim Kadwa, and security company boss Tariq Downes,…
11 May 19 min

The City of Gold is bankrupt

The City of Gold is bankrupt. And don't take our word for it, the finance minister says so! Enoch Godongwana has even instructed Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero to halt a R10 billion wage hike for municipal workers, a move that may come back to bite the beleaguered administration. Here, in this…
7 May 20 min