[1][2] In 2008, Rampedi joined City Press, where he became known for a series of exposés about the commercial interests of rising politician Julius Malema of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League.
[1] For three years at City Press, he and Adriaan Basson investigated Malema, in Rampedi's summation because, "When we started suspecting this guy was living beyond his means we went out of our way to find out where his income came from".
[6] On one occasion, at a press conference at Luthuli House, Malema called Rampedi "a small boy" and a "poor, stupid reporter who accepts brown envelopes".
[3] His editor-in-chief at City Press, Ferial Haffajee, defended him strongly, calling him "the person who makes the politicians go nuts in Limpopo with his forensic coverage of the decline of governance there.
In late 2014, Rampedi was the lead journalist[12] on a series of reports that alleged the existence of a so-called rogue unit within the South African Revenue Service (SARS).
According to one report, written by Rampedi, Mzilikazi wa Afrika, and Stephan Hofstatter, the unit had spied on citizens, as well as on politicians; another claimed that SARS owned a brothel.
[13] The Sunday Times was ordered to retract all stories about the "rogue unit saga" and to apologise publicly in writing to the three men they had implicated: Pillay, van Loggerenberg, and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
[22] He was also the president of the Forum of Journalists for Transformation, a body founded in 2015 as a "foil" to SANEF,[23][24] and on 5 November 2018, he replaced Thabiso Kotane as the host of Capricorn FM's weeknight talk show.
[26] In that capacity, in 2020, he broke an important story about alleged conflicts of interest in COVID-19 procurement in Gauteng, leading to inquiries into the conduct of presidential spokesperson Khusela Diko and provincial minister Bandile Masuku.
[37] However, the national Department of Health said that it had no record of the birth, leading Rampedi to allege further that government denials were part of "a cover-up of mammoth proportions": "a campaign to cover up medical negligence that involved senior politicians and public servants including Premier David Makhura, [provincial minister Nomathemba] Mokgethi and [Steve Biko Hospital chief executive Mathabo] Mathebula".
[39] For his part, Rampedi maintained the truth of his reports,[40] as did Survé, who later told a media briefing that two of the decuplets had died and another eight had been "trafficked" by a syndicate which appeared to involve government and various public hospitals.
The decuplets story was based on months of engagements and work, first-hand accounts of various sources close to Ms Sithole, including friends and relatives, who had no reason to mislead me.