As the year winds down and the air fills with the scent of braai smoke and the sound of celebration, we raise a glass—not just to friends and family, but to the unlikely figure who has dominated our national conversation: Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.
In a season of light, his story is one of shadows and the fierce, focused beam he aims into them.
He is the sober guardian at our festive gate, the complex gift a troubled nation has given itself.
To call him the newsmaker of the year is to acknowledge that in 2025, our deepest mood was not pure joy but a yearning for peace, and we found its most compelling symbol in a police commissioner.
Think of the images that cut through the clutter for a larger part of this year. It was Mkhwanazi. His blunt, televised promises— “we are coming”—were not just police statements; they were the thrilling dialogue of a hero finally answering the call in our national drama.
In a time that often feels unmoored, he offered the irresistible script of a father figure restoring order.
And what a spectacle he staged! In a year of celebration, he provided his own fireworks display of state potency.
The parades of handcuffed “kingpins” and the allegations of mountains of cash handed to the security cluster officials in Woolworths bags—these were our peculiar, public feasts.
Each revelation was a collective toast, a ritual where we could point at the captured monster and say: “See? The dragon can be slain.”
He transformed the grim news of crime into a narrative of reclamation, giving us a shared enemy and a shared victory to cheer. The festive season is about coming together, and Mkhwanazi achieved this within the fractured soul of the police force itself. He became the bridge between the street and the suite.
To the constable on the beat, he spoke as a brother who knows the grind. To the nation, he acted as the purifying chief, firing corrupt generals with the clean finality of turning a new page. He made internal cleansing feel like a unifying national mission—a spring cleaning of the state we could all get behind.
Yet, even as we celebrate, the terrifying truth spices our wine. Our celebration of him is a confession of our profound need.
We cheer his ritual sacrifices—the corrupt officials, the arrested syndicates—because we crave a purifier for a system that feels poisoned.
He has become the personification of our social contract, and every bold move is a promise that the state might yet protect its guests at the national table.
So, we end the year with his face on our screens and his name on our lips. We celebrate the symbol while nervously praying the substance holds.
Mkhwanazi is more than a man; he is the embodiment of our collective wish for a safer, saner tomorrow. We clink glasses to his strength, because we feel our own fragility.
He is the newsmaker of the year because his story is ours: a nation, amidst its festivities, praying for the light to last and for the guardian at the gate to never falter. Let us toast that hope, honestly, knowing just how much depends on it.
