Chikunga names eight Kempton Park victims as GBVF council starts work

Eight women were killed in one locality in Kempton Park, and five of them have not yet been identified. That is the fact at the centre of a memorial service addressed on Wednesday by the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, who used the platform to name the legal instruments her department is now relying on and to appeal directly to the public for help.

Chikunga said three of the eight women have been identified, including Elizabeth Moselakgomo, known to her family as Tsontso, whose memorial service she was addressing. The remaining five bodies have not been named. “Five families are out there right now, waiting, wondering, and living in agonizing suspense,” she said, appealing to anyone with a missing relative to come forward so the women can be buried under their own names.

The instruments, named

The minister set out three legal positions she described as non-negotiable.

Employers at all levels, she said, are legally obliged to check the National Register for Sexual Offenders before any appointment is finalised, and employers who fail to comply face criminal liability. “No predator will find safe harbour, employment, or a hiding place in our schools, our businesses, or our public institutions,” she said.

On sentencing, she said the newly effected legal amendments mean offenders of gender-based violence and femicide will receive life sentences and will not be considered for parole. “A life sentence will mean exactly that, life behind bars without compromise,” she said.

She also said the power of police and prosecutors to grant station bail in gender-based violence cases has been removed through amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act, so that only a court can make that decision after a hearing.

Beyond the Criminal Procedure Act, Chikunga named the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, the Criminal and Related Matters Amendment Act and the Domestic Violence Amendment Act as the legislation her department has enacted and is enforcing.

On the institutional side, she announced that the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide has been formally established under Act 9 of 2024, and that its board has been inaugurated, inducted and set to work. A country-wide Comprehensive Action Plan is expected from the council.

The scale the minister cited

Chikunga cited the Human Sciences Research Council National Prevalence Study on gender-based violence and femicide, saying it shows that 33,1% of South African women, more than 7,3 million mothers, daughters and sisters, have experienced physical violence in their lifetime, and that nearly 10% have survived sexual violence. More than 35% of women over the age of 18, she said, have been subjected to physical or sexual abuse.

She described the Kempton Park killings as a symptom of what she called a systemic, undeclared warfare waged against the women of this country, and said the burden of safety must shift from victims to perpetrators. “Women have an absolute, unchallengeable right to occupy public spaces, to walk, to run, and to live freely,” she said. “We cannot, and we will not, continue telling women to watch what they wear or where they walk.”

The child at the centre of it

Chikunga said she visited the Moselakgomo family in Kempton Park the day before the service, in her capacity as minister and, she said, as a woman and a mother. There she met Moselakgomo’s eight-year-old daughter, who had written her mother a goodbye letter in her own handwriting, listing the things her mother will miss now that she has become, in the child’s words, “God’s newest and best angel.”

Moselakgomo was described by her family, the minister said, as the glue that held them together. She had gone out for a routine run.

What the state says it is doing

Chikunga said President Cyril Ramaphosa has directed that these cases be prioritised and that no stone be left unturned, and that law enforcement agencies are under strict orders to use every investigative resource available. She said intelligence, law enforcement and judicial structures will work in tandem to track down and prosecute offenders.

Addressing the men of South Africa directly, she said: “Stop it. Stop murdering women. Stop raping women. Stop violating women.” She said the government is focused on promoting positive masculinity and is engaging schools, churches and traditional leaders to socialise boys and men toward respect, equality and protection.

What happens next

The National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, established under Act 9 of 2024 with its board now in place, is expected to produce a country-wide Comprehensive Action Plan. The identification of the five unnamed women recovered in Kempton Park depends on members of the public reporting missing relatives to the authorities.

This report is based on the official record of the minister’s address published by the South African Government at https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/minister-sindisiwe-chikunga-memorial-service-elizabeth-%E2%80%9Ctsontso%E2%80%9D-moselakgomo-17-sep. The document is a published speech, and the figures and legal positions in it are stated as the minister gave them.