A residential district gripped by fear
South Africa is facing renewed demands for action after nine women were found dead in Ekurhuleni, the sprawling residential region east of Johannesburg, in a series of brutal killings that has left communities fearful and intensified pressure on the government to confront gender-based violence.
Dineo Motapane, a 38-year-old mother of two, was last seen alive on Sunday. Her badly injured and partly burned body was discovered two days later in a residential area of Ekurhuleni. Her family later identified her after the grim task of confirming her death.
Nokwanda Matshikiza, Dineo’s aunt, said relatives must eventually tell her young daughter what had happened. “What we are going to do, I have no idea,” she said. “But something must give.”
Matshikiza asked how anyone could explain such a death to a child. “How do you explain that your parent was brutally murdered, dumped in a field, and just left there, discarded like a piece of rubbish,” she said. “There’s no coming to peace with it. It’s something you can never reconcile yourself with, that you can never get over.”
Dineo’s death is one of at least nine recent discoveries of women’s bodies in Ekurhuleni since July. Five were found in Kempton Park, another district of the metropolitan region. Most of the victims were in their 20s or 30s, and almost all had been subjected to extreme violence before
