When Kwesi Hudson, the manager of famed Soweto restaurant Sakhumzi, was gunned down in cold blood at the Vilakazi Street eatery, it made for headline news across many media platforms.

It is understandable as Vilakazi Street is the only street in the world to have been home to two Nobel peace prize laureates. It has been sold as one of the famous township's, or even the entire country's, major tourist destinations, and rightly so.

The murder of Hudson wasn't simply another number to add up to the piling list of wanton murders this country has come accustomed and numbed to. Hudson was shot dead for daring to tell two young men who'd arrived at the establishment late that the eatery was closed for business for the day.

The murder highlighted the kind of lawlessness that bedevils this country. Many such cases go unresolved, thus feeding into the brazen nature of such crimes, which sees police recording 40000-plus murders a year.

But this had somewhat of a happy ending in that Njabulo Ngubane, the man who pulled the trigger, has been found guilty and sentenced to a life term.

The investigator in the case, Captain Strike Ngubane, describes the convicted killer as "a killing machine" who apparently went around snuffing out lives with impunity.

Captain Ngubane described how he tracked his man down to Msinga, an area notorious for the kind of murders the other Ngubane pulled at Sakhumzi.

It is the kind of police work that often goes unheralded while much spotlight is shone on the failures of the police.

But, as part of a nation that cries out for heroism such as that shown by Captain Ngubane, the Sowetan doffs its hat to him and many like him in the police service.

Last week we told of the heroism of the men and a woman in blue who worked tirelessly to bring to book Sandile Mantsoe, the good-for-nothing young man who murdered Karabo Mokoena and set her body alight in the veld.

It is with these kind of police officers that we can live in hope that this great country will one day turn the tide of the crime onslaught that has been pummelling us relentlessly.