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Police in South Africa have found a woman’s body in a cemetery in Tembisa, a suburb north-east of central Johannesburg, marking the tenth such discovery in recent months. The case has intensified concern over violence against women in the country, according to the BBC.
The body was discovered on Saturday morning and was recognised by a friend who had been with the woman at a bar the previous evening. Police said crime scene investigators were collecting evidence, but officials had not publicly identified the victim.
The friend told South African broadcaster SABC that she recognised the woman’s clothing in a photograph of the body. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to her children,” she said. “It’s painful.”
Police assess possible links
Gauteng Police Commissioner Tommy Mthombeni said it was too early to determine whether the latest death was connected to the other cases.
However, he said the other victims had a “similar victimology” and a shared “modus operandi”, factors that could help investigators establish whether the deaths were linked.
“For now, it’s not something which we can overrule to say there’s a serial killer, but we cannot conclusively indicate as such,” Lieutenant General Mthombeni told reporters.
The other bodies have been found in similar circumstances since July, mostly in Kempton Park, a neighbourhood adjacent to Tembisa. Many of the victims were young women, and almost all had suffered severe violence before their deaths.
Outcry over violence against women
The killings have triggered a national outcry in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of gender-based violence. South Africa recorded 5,427 murders between April and June this year, although official police statistics do not classify victims by gender.
The South African Human Rights Commission said last week that 569 women were killed and 1,052 survived attempted murder during the same three-month period.
The deaths have increased pressure on the national government, less than a year after ministers declared gender-based violence a national disaster. Three men appeared in court earlier this week in connection with one of the nine previous murders, while police continue searching for other suspected participants.
