The South African Parliament will never be the same again. Not after Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya took the mic, his tone laced with disbelief and fear, and dropped a hip hop-laced bombshell.
For the first time in democratic history, MPs heard that a senior police officer allegedly sent a message quoting 2Pac — yes, Tupac Amaru Shakur — threatening to “kill people in their sleep.”
According to Sibiya, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi lost his cool after SAPS Crime Intelligence boss Lieutenant General Dumisane Khumalo was arrested earlier this year.
“General Khumalo got arrested,” Sibiya told the Ad Hoc committee. “That angered General Mkhwanazi, to an extent that he sent a message to one of his friends, [a] colleague. He sent a message of a song of 2Pac that says, ‘I’ll kill them at night when they are sleeping.’ He was so furious.”
Pronunciation enough proof
From how Sibiya pronounces 2Pac as Two Pack instead of Two Park, you can tell he is not familiar with the artist. This makes his testimony credible in that only 2Pac’s greatest disciples would know about such incensed lyrics. And from which explicit song they came: “Breathin’ ”. In the hook of the song, Pac exclaims, “Enemies give me reason / to be the last motherf**er breathin’ / Bustin’ my automatic rounds, catch ’em while they sleepin’.”
That’s not a lyric; it’s a manifesto. The verses get darker:
“Woke up with fifty enemies plottin’ my death… Complete my mission, my competition no longer beefin’… Now I’m the last motherf***er breathin.”
It fits Mkhwanazi’s image — a “bad boy killer” who leads the fight against armed syndicates. Sibiya’s unease is the reason why Mkhwanazi might just be South Africa’s Makaveli in uniform. Let’s examine a few reasons.
Reason 1: Activism and Age
Mkhwanazi told Parliament he joined the police “out of activism”. That alone could’ve made 2Pac proud. Both were rebels with badges — half activist, half outlaw.
Similar in age
When 2Pac died in 1996, he was 25; Mkhwanazi was 23, already a constable navigating the ghosts of apartheid. Imagine patrolling to “Brenda’s Got a Baby” or “Unconditional Love,” feeling trapped inside the system you’re trying to fix.
In “So Many Tears,” 2Pac wrote:
“Back in elementary, I thrived on misery / Left me alone, I grew up amongst a dyin’ breed.”
That pain mirrored the violence Mkhwanazi saw in KwaZulu-Natal’s political wars. The very reason, he says, he joined the force.
Reason 2: Shared Attire, Blazing Gunfire
2Pac wore his militancy —camouflage, bandana, and Timberlands.
Mkhwanazi did the same at that viral July 6 briefing.
“It was the first time that I saw people in camouflage that we were no longer wearing,” he told MPs.
“They said they are the Special Task Force… I watched their video and realised, ‘Okay, no, this is troublesome.’ And then I was excited and I joined it.”
Too many similarities with late rapper
“Troublesome” — the word links him to “Troublesome ’96”:
“N**as talk a lot of sh*t, but that’s after I’m gone… I’m troublesome.”
“Menacin’ methods label me a lethal weapon… Death before dishonor, better bomb on ’em first.”
If that isn’t what rattled Sibiya, what did? As 2Pac said, “Hearin’ thoughts of my enemies pleadin’ please…” Sibiya truly feared he might be one of them.
Reason 3: The Outlawz and the PKTT
2Pac led The Outlawz — E.D.I. Mean, Yaki Kadafi, Hussein Fatal, Napoleon, Kastro, Khomeini. Their creed: loyalty over legality.
“We ain’t your average rap group / Outlawz, Makaveli be the General.”
Mkhwanazi commands his own brotherhood — the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT). Like the Outlawz, they move first and explain later: raid, rescue, recover. To a rhythm 2Pac would recognise.
Reason 4: Shared Enemies
2Pac’s war was with the system. “Witness my enemies die when I ride by.”
Mkhwanazi told MPs, “There can never be peace between a police officer and a criminal.”
Similar civil convictions
2Pac echoed him years earlier in “Never Be Peace”:
“Now of course I want peace on the streets… but realistically, paintin’ perfect pictures ain’t never worked… And I know there’ll never be peace… That’s why I keep my pistol when I walk the streets.”
His outburst still roars through time:
“F*** peace! We can’t never have peace / ’Til you motherf***ers clean up this mess you made.”
Mkhwanazi’s July 6 presser carried that same defiance — peace without confrontation is paperwork.
Sibiya’s distress about the 2Pac message was so pulpable in the word he shared with the committee.
“I began to hear that they feel that I had something to do with that arrest. I ended up calling the national commissioner [General Fannie Masemola] and said, ‘NasCom, I don’t know about this arrest.”
This admission that he had to call the top boss to confess his innocence is a sign that Mkhwanazi resembled 2Pac in every way on that day the message was sent.
Both feared by criminals
Rappers who lived during the East Coast-West Coast beef that unfolded over who shot who when 2Pac was still alive confessed that they feared the man so much that they had a 6pm curfew every night in fear of 2Pac, who dressed in camouflage fatigues and blasted shots in the air in broad daylight.
Reason 5: Shared Justice
2Pac raged against “crooked cops and dirty judges.” Mkhwanazi claims his Task Team has “clips” of judges in compromising acts.
Both saw justice as a fight, not a formality. When 2Pac rapped, “They got money for wars but can’t feed the [impoverished],” he was diagnosing society’s disease. When Mkhwanazi exposed rot within SAPS, he was doing the same.
Two sons of rage, each believing chaos can cleanse. One eventually succumbed to the “slugs” he always bragged about, what he called the “death of a true thug.”
“I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world,” said 2Pac.
Maybe, just maybe, Mkhwanazi is that spark — South Africa’s remix of Makaveli.
