25-year-old Khaya Mthethwa from Durban made South Africans very proud when he became the eighth South African to win South African Idols!

Almost 3 million votes were cast in the past week in the hottest Idols contest which ended with a stunning, star studded finale on Tuesday 2 October.

Even before the big moment, the suspense-filled announcement that Khaya had taken the title, the live Idols Season 8 Finalé proved to be spectacular.



Starting with a guest appearance by South Africa’s “zef” rapper Jack Parow,  the line-up also included a performance by Zakes Bantwini and the guys of the Season 8 Top 10, Toya Delazy with the girls, last season’s winner Dave van Vuuren, and Freshlyground, singing their latest single, Take Me To The Dance.

Check out these highlights and more on the official Idols SA video gallery.

The winner of the popular Wooden Mic award, Mr Gavin Meltz, was in the audience tonight and one particularly promising Wooden Mic finalist, Sarah Modiba from Johannesburg, was given a special surprise this year to see how Wooden Mic contestants would fare given the full Idols treatment.

Sarah was given an Idols Makeover with coaching sessions from the Idols vocal coaches and she made her stage debut in tonight’s show, singing the ballad I Believe I Can Fly.

As the winner of Idols Season 8 Khaya takes home with him a prize package worth almost a million Rand, consisting of:

• a recording contract with Universal Music South Africa
• R250 000 from Samsung, plus R50 000 worth of Samsung products including a LED TV, a printer, a laptop and a camera
• R48 000 airtime and 24 GIGS of data from Vodacom
• R250 000 cash from KFC
• a Ford Fiesta 1.6 Titanium
• a R30 000 fashion voucher from Truworths
• R50 000 voucher for musical equipment from Yamaha
• plus a Yamaha Waverunner VX700S jet-skit and trailer
• and a precision-crafted Shure UHF-R Premium wireless microphone system and a PSM®900 personal monitor system.

Khaya will start working on his album with Universal Music within the next couple of weeks and his first single, Move, which he debuted in the Top 2 Spectacular last week, is already getting airplay.

The video for Move can be seen on the official Idols Season 8 website and fans can also download it simply by SMSing 'Khaya' to 39006. It costs R15 per full track download and data charges are dependent on specific operator deals. T's&C's apply.

Season 8 was a co-production between M-Net and Mzansi Magic. Updates and further information can be found on the official Idols Facebook page at “Idols South Africa”, on Twitter @IdolsSA and on the official Idols SA website.