Nine women have been found dead in South Africa's Ekurhuleni municipality, east of Johannesburg, over a period of roughly two months, triggering widespread protests, public anger and renewed scrutiny of the government's response to gender-based violence.
The latest victim was discovered on Thursday morning in Dawn Park, a residential area of Boksburg. The woman, believed to be in her thirties, was found half-naked and wrapped in a sheet. Most of the nine victims were sexually assaulted.
Police have not established that all nine cases are connected. "We are still investigating whether we are dealing with one perpetrator or a group of men that are behind the murders of these women," South African Police Service spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said. Investigators are also examining whether copycat crimes could be involved.
"This is not an investigation that you can rush, because it is quite complex," Mathe said. "It may at this stage involve multiple perpetrators. But let's leave it to the detectives."
Among the victims was Elizabeth Moselakgomo, a 38-year-old manager, mother and keen runner. She left her home in the Ekurhuleni municipality for her usual afternoon run at around 5:30 pm on September 9 and never returned. Her eight-year-old daughter raised the alarm when her mother did not come home. Moselakgomo's body was found days later — sources report either three or five days after her disappearance — half-naked, with her face so badly beaten it was unrecognisable.
The killings have shocked South Africa, a country already notorious for some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. According to police statistics, more than 100 rape cases are reported and approximately 15 women are killed every day. The government declared gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster in 2025.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised that "no stone will be left unturned" in the hunt for those responsible. Many South Africans, however, say the government has not done enough to keep women and girls safe.
"Women in South Africa continue to be hunted and denied the most basic right to life and security," said Amnesty International's South Africa Director Shenilla Mohamed. "Women are tired of platitudes. We want to know what is going to be done to make women and children feel safe."
Princess Eurika Mogane, a commissioner at South Africa's Commission for Gender Equality, described the situation as a war. "This is a war. It feels like individuals are being hunted," she said. "When someone is the hunter, [the] best thing that you can do is to ensure that the prey are protected."
Police advice urging women not to walk or run alone and to avoid isolated areas has drawn sharp criticism. "A lot of the women in South Africa right now are saying, 'You are basically telling us to adjust our lives to perpetrators,'" Mogane said.
The National Shelter Movement of South Africa said its 24-hour helpline and affiliated shelters are receiving women with increasingly severe experiences of abuse, including death threats, stalking, strangulation and repeated violations of protection orders. "These are not isolated incidents," the organisation said in a statement. "They are indicators of a broader crisis in which violence against women has become deeply normalised in many communities."
The organisation also pushed back against police safety messaging. "Safety messaging should not imply that women can prevent violence simply by making different choices. The responsibility for violence lies with perpetrators, while the responsibility for protection lies with society and the state."
Protests have taken place in Kempton Park, the suburb where many of the killings occurred, as well as in Cape Town. Running clubs across the country have held memorial runs in honour of Moselakgomo and the other victims. At one event in Johannesburg, participants dressed in black and observed a minute of silence.
"Gender-based violence, but particularly femicide, is such a big issue in South Africa. As a woman you can't do anything alone," said 26-year-old Shari Maluluke, who attended the memorial run. "You jog, you can get killed, you go to the post office, you can get killed, in your homes you can get killed. It just makes me angry that I can't move freely, my whole country feels like a prison."
Specialist paediatrician and mental health advocate Nokukhanya Khanyile-Lenake noted that Moselakgomo's eight-year-old daughter had known to raise the alarm — and that it still was not enough. "As women, we've done the maximum to the point where we're even teaching our young children what to do, and it's still not enough," she said.
Some academic research suggests that years of apartheid-era rule, under which Black men were denied agency and autonomy, contributed to a crisis of masculinity and the entrenchment of patriarchal attitudes — factors some South Africans cite as underlying drivers of the country's femicide crisis.
