Runners gathered in Johannesburg on Saturday, 19 September 2026, to remember Elizabeth ‘Tsontso’ Moselakgomo and demand protection for women following the discovery of nine women’s bodies in Ekurhuleni. Reuters reported that participants wore black and lit candles at the memorial run for Moselakgomo, who disappeared after going out to exercise. The gathering was a new public response to the deaths, not an announcement that police had solved them.
The calls for action reached beyond Gauteng. In Mossel Bay, residents held separate solidarity walks on 18 and 19 September, according to local reporting by the Mossel Bay Advertiser. Friday’s procession travelled from All Saints Anglican Church in D’Almeida to Da Gamaskop Police Station; Saturday’s walk began at The Point and went to the municipality and back. These were local demonstrations against gender-based violence, not additional crime scenes in the Ekurhuleni investigation.
Grief becomes a demand for safer public spaces
Reuters also reported a Women for Change memorial event in Cape Town on Friday and criticism of advice that places the burden of avoiding violence on women themselves. That concern gives the gatherings their wider significance: women are asking for ordinary activities such as running, commuting and walking to be safe, rather than for public life to become progressively more restricted. Public promises of protection will ultimately be tested by prevention and investigative results.
At Moselakgomo’s memorial service on 17 September, Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga said women have a right to occupy public spaces and rejected responses focused on what women wear or where they walk. Her published speech also described the loss faced by Moselakgomo’s family. That service was a separate event from Saturday’s run; the minister’s remarks express the government’s position, not a finding about who committed the killings.
Nine cases do not prove one offender
South African police confirmed the discovery of a ninth woman’s body in Dawn Park, Boksburg, on the morning of Thursday, 17 September 2026. Gauteng Community Safety said the unidentified woman’s death would be added to the investigations into women found dead across Ekurhuleni during the previous two months.
Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Fred Kekana said a passerby found the body near a construction site and alerted police, according to the Associated Press. Police have not publicly identified the woman. The official statement confirms the discovery and the expanded inquiry without establishing when she died or whether the same person was responsible for any other case.
The chronology remains important. Authorities announced an eighth body and a R400,000 information reward at a briefing on Tuesday, 15 September. Earlier changes to the count included older discoveries being added to the wider inquiry. Nine bodies being investigated in the same municipality does not mean nine women were killed or found on the same day.
Investigators must still determine which deaths, if any, share a perpetrator. SAPS’s initial public statement described similarities serious enough to warrant specialist resources but explicitly stopped short of confirming a serial killer. Expanding the number of cases under review is an investigative step, not a forensic conclusion linking every victim to one offender.
Police have said one suspect is in custody in connection with the first body discovered in July. Authorities have not connected that person to all nine deaths, and the latest Dawn Park statement announces no new arrest. The distinction matters for families and the public: detention is not a conviction, and it does not establish that the wider investigation has been solved.
Identification, evidence and the official response
Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia said police would increase their presence in Kempton Park and surrounding areas through Operation Shanela. SABC reported his intention to “lock down” the area in the coming weeks as law-enforcement resources are mobilised. The briefing describes an expanded policing operation; the material reviewed does not establish a legally imposed curfew, a stay-at-home order or a blanket ban on movement.
The multidisciplinary investigation is led by Gauteng Deputy Provincial Commissioner Major General Mbuso Khumalo. The earlier SAPS statement identifies specialist detectives, the Murder and Robbery Unit and the Investigative Psychology Unit among the resources involved. Their task includes establishing the circumstances of individual deaths and testing possible connections, rather than assuming that geographic proximity alone proves a common case.
Among the identified women is 38-year-old Elizabeth ‘Tsontso’ Moselakgomo, whose family identified her body after she went missing following a run. SAPS also said on 17 September that another woman, 38-year-old Dineo Evelyn Motapane, had been positively identified after her body was found in Kwa-Thema. They must not be confused with the Dawn Park woman or other victims whose identities have not been released.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has directed that the investigations receive priority. His 15 September statement asks people with relevant information, or a missing relative or friend, to contact Warrant Officer Elvis Manyike on 082 465 7249. Parliament’s police committee also urged residents and businesses to preserve potentially useful CCTV, dashcam and number-plate-recognition footage. Those are official reporting channels and evidence requests, not invitations to identify suspects publicly.
The Commission for Gender Equality has called for an urgent safety audit involving police, the municipality, transport authorities and community structures. Its proposed checks include lighting, pedestrian routes, public-transport access, neglected spaces, surveillance and emergency assistance. The underlying concern is that ordinary activities such as walking, exercising and travelling to work should not require women to withdraw from public life.
The next substantive developments will be confirmed victim identifications, post-mortem findings, verified links between cases and evidence tested through the justice process. Public reassurance should be measured against those outcomes and the delivery of safer spaces. Rumours about a named suspect or a single offender can harm both the inquiry and people who have not been shown to be responsible.
Update, 19 September 2026: this report adds Saturday’s Johannesburg memorial run, the Mossel Bay solidarity walks and the minister’s 17 September memorial address. The earlier update added the ninth body in Dawn Park and the identification of Dineo Evelyn Motapane. The number remains nine in the reporting reviewed; no common offender has been established. The archival presidential portrait illustrates the official response and does not depict any of the memorial events.
