Buckle up. You made it! #2025 is more than a movie; it is a full-blown, low-budget, direct-to-streaming epic where the scriptwriter was tripping on acid. I’ve been watching the headlines so you don’t have to because it’s #Dezemba and you dear readers fed up. This year has been tough, for many reasons, some worth mentioning, some worth erasing from memory, and some worth reliving.
In 2025 we’ve endured tangerine-shaped tornadoes, camo-clad whistleblowers, purple-painted protests and we’ve watched our women and children get treated as if they were just a statistic in a warzone we now call home. Seems we’ve only just begun. This is the surface, scratched raw in 2025.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room, and I don’t mean the one that trampled a car in Kruger. Trumpet stomped back into the global timeline this year like he owned the place, and in many ways, he did. His inauguration week was a masterclass in the #ArtOfTheSteal. And he wasn’t just making a mockery of policy; he was performing a form of absurd geopolitical theatre, the political protagonist who in this one act play wanted to annex Greenland, play poker with trade tariffs, threaten the Panama Canal and leave the WHO and the ICC.
Nobody was safe except the lapdogs. Who said Kennedy? This was never going to be a one act play. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico, pardoned the insurrectionists, banned TikTok and declared a state of emergency at the Mexican border. He saluted a Beefeater for an hour and a half, sold Teslas off the White House lawn and threatened to make Canada the 51st state. But his most toxic export was to us? The myth of #WhiteGenocide. That was how 2025 started. On the back of a good deed.
Touched a US nerve
South Africa, to its eternal credit, took Israel to the ICJ. Ronald Lamola became a global figure of principled resistance. That, my friends, is the reason for Trump’s loathing of South Africa, not farm murders! We touched the nerve of the US-Israeli alliance and lobby, and the tangerine threw a tantrum. We became Putin’s proxy by default, and that gave us temporary leverage. Our moral authority on the Palestinian issue is the only clean thing in our filthy diplomatic cupboard. This was coupled with the tale of the #VoetseKKKers, Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets.
These fools, with their apartheid-era nostalgia and fancy braai tongs, flew to the #WitHuis and fed Trump a far-fetched fable that white farmers were being systematically exterminated in South Africa. They presented memes and misinformation as fact, and Trump, ever the opportunist, ran with it. He offered refugee status to #AmeriKaners, slapped tariffs on our economy, and tried to bully Cupcake.
While Trump was being a bulldozer, Ramaphosa was playing chess. He positioned himself as a peace broker between Putin and the West and for the most part told Trump that if he wanted to play ball with Russia, he had to play nice with South Africa. Cyril tried the #GreatReset entering the oval office flanked by his golfing buddies.
Ain’t no hero
Who will ever forget him dragging Johann Rupert (the real king of swing) into Trump’s lair. Skip forward and after much of to-ing and fro-ing, Matamela had the bollox to say #WeWillNotBeBullied. And then allowed the superpower to bully the shit out of us. Look, we were proud of Cyril’s sudden interest for five minutes, but he ain’t no hero.
At home, Cyril’s #NotFitForPurpose. His government is a bloated overdressed, overpaid talkative mess. But the band played on, and he announced a #NationalDialogue and went for a grand tour through our burning cities preparing for the #G20Summit. He was “shocked” at the state of Joburg’s streets before the G20, he took the tour of Joburg in a blue light brigade, sipping whatever tipple works for him, because strolling in Joburg would mean stepping into the purple tide that was coming in stronger than the G20 planes. #WomenforChange hijacked the #G20 before it even started.
‘Merica are so short sighted; if that US embassy lackey had asked the one question: Who are these women? then the White House of Horrors would have had a real story: A war against our women and children.
A ‘national disaster’ blah blah
Every 2.5 hours, a woman is murdered. Every 12 minutes, one is assaulted. We painted the internet purple. #Women4Change and we tried but what did we get? A meeting. A ‘national disaster’ blah blah. #TalkTalk. The #SexOffendersRegister is still closed because there isn’t a sex offenders register. The dockets just go missing.
The cops still ask, “Are you sure?” when a broken woman crawls in begging for help. Amid all the political theatre, the real horror of 2025 unfolded.
We did actually stop for one child. We named her #CweCwe. A seven-year-old girl raped repeatedly. For months, the story simmered. Then, it exploded. The nation rose. We marched; the collective rage was deafening. Yet, in #ChildProtectionWeek, in those seven days, the statistics whispered their grim truth: 500 children would die and 120 would be raped.
In the same week a four-year-old in Eldorado Park was beaten to death by her father; her mother faced charges for failing to report it. A two-year-old, was sold by his mother for R75 000. #ChildCarnage 2025 where we struggled to keep our children alive.
A flicker of light
The courts were our only flicker of light. Judge Nathan Erasmus in the #JoshlinSmith trial is an example of the president we need. He’s efficient, sharp, and takes no nonsense from tik-addicted state witnesses or incompetent translators for that matter. We watched in horror as Joshlin’s mother’s friend ‘Rens’ unravelled on the stand, her brain fried by drugs, her story a web of lies.
The mother (Kelly) said Joshlin “made her famous”. And to this day we have not found the nation’s #Joshlin. Erasmus gave #KellySmith and her cohorts life, wishing he could give them the death penalty, so did we. These are the demons walking among us.
And it’s not just Kelly. It’s #HugoFerreira, who raped and beat his eight-day-old daughter to death. It’s #TiffinyMeek, who beat her son and left him on a stairwell. It’s the mom who filmed her toddler smoking Mandrax. It’s the 64-year-old man who has been raping his daughter since she was nine. This is our #RockBottom 2025.
This is why we painted the internet purple and hijacked the summit but the #G20 continued without Trump. He refused to attend and sent a junior to pick up the baton of the G20. Thereafter he rebranded the event as an American initiative and promptly chucked us out. I guess we won’t be getting our “welcome to Miami” pina colada with a tiny umbrella.
Our best thriller yet
So, the G20 was a disaster at the box office, but what came after really shocked the punters: a sequel as good, perhaps better than the original. The pilot was State Capture. But 2025’s sequel served up #MadlangaComission. Our best thriller yet.
Picture this: a police lieutenant general, Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, stands before the nation—not in dress uniform, but in full on camo gear flanked by masked gunmen. He then drops files thicker than a politician’s skull and alleges that a powerful syndicate has infiltrated the very heart of the South African Police Service.
No surprises there except the target: stage left enter the now special-leaved-slashed-suspended Minister of Police, #SenzoMchunu and those termed the #BigFive. I’m still not talking about elephants.
Mkhwanazi detonated a bomb under the President’s love for fine sofas and cupcake was demoted to the head of HR and introduced “special leave” (not suspension), for crooks like Senzo Mchunu and Cederic Sibiya. Mchunu had been accused of being a human purse who carried #WooliesBlackBags for the president. And the fall out became the #MadlangaCommission and a farcical parallel #AdhocParliamentaryCommittee.
They became our favourite soap operas. We stayed glued as #ImogenMashazi, a former Ekurhuleni city manager, testified and blamed “admin” for justice failures including rape. All this while applying many coats of red lipstick, sticking her tongue out and scrolling on her phone. We met Julius Mkhwanazi (not Malema, confusing, I know), a deputy police chief who rambled for days, insisting he was a “helper” not a “facilitator” because “facilitators go to jail”.
Breathtaking absurdity
The absurdity was breathtaking. He painted a picture of a police service utterly captured by gangsters like Vusi Muzi ‘Cat’ Matlala, a man who had a personal blue-light brigade and gave Bheki-The-Hat-Cele stacks of cash in #BlackWooliesBags. #CatAndTheHat. So, Cat, is currently behind trallies because he hired a hitman to shoot his girlfriend in the face.
No trouble to South Africa, we took the court to the chookie. Where Cat appeared at the #MadlangaCommission wearing Fendi, and he told us how he had handed over hundreds of thousands of rands to the cops. He insisted this act was not one of bribery, but more like blue-light branding. It’s also just between friends. The thing is, according to Cat, #TheHat got greedy, so he stopped taking his calls.
And now he is behind the wall. Cat wasn’t the only one from the #BigFive to feel the heat. Our jaws dropped as we watched known #TembisaHospital #Tenderpreneur and gangster #KTMolefe’s assets seized. We held our breath as they loaded Lambo after Lambo into seizure vans; it’s all metal after all. A perfect metaphor for our cautious dance with elite crime.
Wild tales
Then we had the madness of Professor (not really) Honorary Fellow (really) Mary den Haas rambling on about organ trafficking at mortuaries and how she was a patsy in a massive cover-up. And then we had Brown Mogotsi yawning and spinning wild tales about Mkhwanazi (the Lt Gen) being a CIA agent. In 2025 #Tenderpreneur has graduated from punchline to a legitimate job title on CVs. 2025, by definition is overdressed and puts lipstick on pigs.
The rot is everywhere. It was in the #ZamaZamas at #Stilfontein, where we starved and suffocated dozens of men in a mine shaft and called it #ValaUmgodi (close the hole). “Close the hole” on the illegals that run the underground.
The rot was in the #BrazenBribery caught on tape by Pieter-Louis Myburgh of the Daily Maverick, where a government official offered him sixty grand in a Dior bag to kill a story. The rot festered in the #WaterWars in #Coronationville, where police shot rubber bullets at people begging for water, killing a 70-year-old. The rotten mayor, #DadaTheDodo Morero, promised water; they’re still waiting. Revolting.
Coalition collusion
Revolting, like our political landscape that was a #CoalitionCollision. The DA, part of the Government of National Unity (GNU), perfected the art of the weekly resignation threat. The #MKParty, Jacob Zuma’s camo-clad resurrection of captured ANC retiring villains, spent more time in court and internal spats than in governance.
#FloydShivambu was #Redefloyed after a questionable visit to fugitive pastor #ShepardBushiri and a public feud with #DuduzileZuma (who traffics men to Russia between Twitter rants). Then came #HelenZille, in her latest un-retirement, the 74-year-old ‘Shriller Zille’ announced a run for Mayor of Johannesburg. In one interview, she dismissed the genocide in Gaza, saying “genocide is a big word,” while her party accepted funding from Israel and she directed traffic on the streets flanked by her bodyguards.
It is clear, as Trollip put it, the DA is a party of eunuchs. The #PatrioticAlliance, led by the charismatic #GaytonMcKenzie, broke many hearts (including my own). Damn you, Gayton, you took that all-expenses-paid trip to Israel and returned declaring there was “no genocide.”
#MyDisappointment was sour the way that politics devoured 2025.
There was a glimmer of fragmented hope that hung like a left behind disco ball on the set of Saturday Night Fever. #GlynisBreytenbach, the DA’s pitbull prosecutor, was a legend in parliament. Juju on process and law is still untouchable; I wish he liked white people and stopped singing.
But we can swap him with Leigh-Ann Mathys. Isn’t she incredible? She didn’t grill on medium heat; she brought a flame thrower. And then there was Dereleen James, outstanding and emotional as we should be when we have nothing to protect us.
The team that always shows up
And of course, there was the team that always show up no matter what: #GiftOfTheGivers, led by the #ImtiazSooliman, was always there – feeding flood victims in the Eastern Cape, housing stranded Palestinian refugees when the state fumbled and being the nation’s conscience.
And then there was you and I; we paid our taxes and quietly, miraculously, we installed more private solar power than Eskom could supply and solved load shedding ourselves. We are a nation that, when abandoned by its so-called leaders, gets on with it. 2025, a year we learnt to survive.
While we wrestled with our demons, the world stage was being commandeered by a reality TV star. A dizzying spectacle of power The world held its breath to stop the slaughter of children in Palestine, and we pinned our hopes on a man with a fake tan and a magic marker.
What we got instead was a bizarre bromance with #ElonMusk providing endless, dark comedy. Musk on stage giving a Nazi salute (twice!), Musk and Trump in the Oval Office, Musk’s son, telling #TanMan “shut your mouth”. Musk appearing with a black eye, blaming his kid, then he was firing off tweets accusing Trump of being on the #EpsteinList. We already knew that, Elon.
Kiss-cam scandal
And then apologising like a runt but not without grazing South Africa’s knees on hot coals and landing himself a tidy exemption from BEE. He went on to rig US elections by giving out actual cheques and then he built fidgets with cutlery in the Oval Office.
And then, to distract you: A #Coldplay kiss-cam infidelity scandal, and Kanye West selling swastika T-shirts during the #SuperBowl. All the while Putin continued his murder spree in the Ukraine and remember those hopes we had for the kids of Gaza? Well, the world watched #BenjaminNetanyahu – armed, funded and shielded by Trump – flatten the very ground of Gaza.
We watched a state gone rogue under a madman; we watched real life hunger games we watched in shame as the wider Arab world – Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt – stood by in revolting complicity, signing cheques that would be rinsed and returned as American bombs. We watched and we shall be harshly judged. 2025, we bear witness.
In the midst of this tidal wave of noise, my own world contracted to a hospital room. My mother was diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis wasn’t good. In our remote paradise of Sodwana Bay, I felt the fear of losing my anchor. The news cycle, with all its fury and folly, suddenly felt like a distant, grating static. And then, the other South Africa – the one that doesn’t make headlines – appeared.
The other South Africa
It was the #SoftMulticolouredUnderbelly. Friends, neighbours, doctors, nurses, pastors and strangers materialised. They built ramps, installed showers, brought casseroles and candles, held vigils and prayed. Our community carried us. It was a profound, quiet lesson: beneath the screaming headlines, there is a nation of unshakeable empathy and resilience carrying a uniquely South African blessing we call #uBuntu.
So, what’s the verdict? We’re a mess. A glorious, infuriating, resilient, heartbreaking mess. We’re led by fools and thieves, but we’re surrounded by giants. We’re obsessed with looking outward while continuing to ignore a real genocide in our back yard. We’re the ones holding a war criminal to account on the world stage, but our local productions have run out of steam. We’re contradictory, cynical and yet somehow, still hopeful.
Acumen has done exactly what the column’s name promises: scratched the surface of the headlines and read the data points to reveal the raw, pulsing nerve of a nation and a world in crisis. I’ve come to learn that our work matters. This column may be satirical, dark, biased, and unfiltered but it bears witness to something darker still.
Klapping Dezemba
And I’ve been called some terrible names, received death threats for debunking the #WhiteGenocide myth, and had my servers hacked to by #Google and #YouTube because of commentary about Palestine. But the data doesn’t lie. It shows what the nation is truly talking about, feeling, and fearing.
And that is that we can produce both a Cat Matlala and a Glynis Breytenbach. That we can fail our children grotesquely yet rise as one for #CweCwe. That we are capable of staggering corruption and breathtaking grassroots kindness. And we laughter deep, dark, survivalist laugh. And we klap a #Dezemba harder than any other country in the world. Hug your people tight because that’s the only headline that truly matters.
I’m Tonya Khoury. Thank you for scratching the surface with me and Acumen Media.
