For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Thabi Shomolekae.

Making headlines: Hill-Lewis backs Rasilingwane to clean up Ekurhuleni; Parly committees want answers after Joburg writes off R13.2bn in unlawful expenditure; And Ghana's economic growth picks up to 6.4% in first quarter

Hill-Lewis backs Rasilingwane to clean up Ekurhuleni

The DA has launched its Election Pledges to the people of Ekurhuleni, declaring it a definitive promise that the city will be rescued from crippling institutional corruption and structural collapse.

Speaking at the party’s campaign launch alongside the DA’s mayoral candidate for Ekurhuleni Khathu Rasilingwane, DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis pulled no punches about the scale of the crisis he said was facing the municipality.

Hill-Lewis claimed that "State capture never truly ended in Ekurhuleni". Instead, he argued, the metro had “mutated into the epicentre of a Gangster State" where he stated political corruption was enforced through fear.

According to the DA, the everyday struggles of Ekurhuleni residents were a result of a deeply entrenched criminal network.

The DA is positioning Rasilingwane as the "strong medicine" needed to deal with corruption. The party highlighted its governance track record in Cape Town, the Western Cape, Midvaal, and Umgeni as proof that “clean, transparent” governance is possible in South Africa.

Parly committees want answers after Joburg writes off R13.2bn in unlawful expenditure

Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs have demanded an exhaustive breakdown of the more than R13.2-billion in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure that the City of Johannesburg wrote off or regularised during the 2024/25 financial year.

During a joint parliamentary briefing regarding the metro's recent audit outcomes, the committees demanded explicit details on the R13.278-billion balance reduction, which fell from R23.614-billion in 2023/24.

The committees stressed that regularising or writing off unlawful expenditure does not make it legal, and does not absolve the embattled municipality of the obligation to hold responsible individuals accountable.

The committees requested an itemised, factual, and legal breakdown of each contravention, the exact financial loss and whether any value was received, as well as the current status of disciplinary action, money recovered, and criminal referrals.

Committee members, including Scopa chairperson Songezo Zibi and Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs chairperson Dr Zweli Mkhize, made it clear that accountability will not be measured by the metro's public relations efforts, but by completed investigations, sanctions against responsible officials, and the recovery of lost funds.

And Ghana's economic growth picks up to 6.4% in first quarter

Ghana's economic growth accelerated in the first quarter of this year, with activity still driven by its services sector, statistics agency data showed today.

Gross domestic product grew by 6.4% year-on-year in the first three months of 2026, up from a revised 6.2% in the same period of 2025, the data showed.

The services and industrial sectors continued to drive economic expansion, with agriculture remaining an important source of livelihoods and food security.

The services sector encompasses information and communication technology, transport and trade, while mining and quarrying are a key part of the industrial sector.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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