DA offers R500 000 in Ekurhuleni murders as nine women are buried without names

Nine women have been found dead in Ekurhuleni in under two months, and only two of them have been named.

The Democratic Alliance has put up R500 000 for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of whoever killed them. Party leader Geordin Hill-Lewis announced the reward in Tsakane on Friday, on the East Rand ward where the discovery of the bodies has dominated the municipal election campaign.

Hill-Lewis was speaking on the party’s Working For All Tour ahead of November’s local government elections. He told residents they would be safer under a DA-run municipality and set out what he said the party would change.

First on his list was the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department. Every senior officer would face a lifestyle audit, he said, with appointments made on capability and officers held to a standard that makes clear they are there to protect the public and not the powerful.

He also promised a stronger visible policing presence in the places residents are most vulnerable, naming crime hotspots, working streetlights, safer public transport stations, parks and pedestrian routes, and better use of drones and cameras.

Appoint people because they are capable. Hold officers to a high standard and make it absolutely clear that they are here to protect the public, not the powerful.

The South African Police Service has offered a separate R400 000 reward for information that could lead to arrests. That reward was announced at a media briefing on the measures being taken to find the perpetrators.

The police have said they do not want to treat the cases as linked until the investigations prove otherwise, and that they need all the help they can get. That is the position of the investigation as it stands, and it is the reason both rewards are on the table.

What the record shows

Nine bodies were found in the Ekurhuleni municipal area in less than two months. Seven of the nine have not been identified. That is the fact that sits underneath both announcements, because a reward is only as useful as the information it produces, and the families who have not yet come forward are the ones the police still need to hear from.

The killings have run through the election campaign in the metro. They have also drawn attention to the state of women’s safety in the province, and to the pace at which murder investigations move when the victims are poor and the cases are many.

The two rewards are separate. The DA’s R500 000 is offered for information leading to arrest and prosecution. The police’s R400 000 is offered for information that could lead to arrests. Neither is a finding, and neither names a suspect.

What it means for the families

For the households in Tsakane, Kempton Park and Boksburg who are still waiting, the practical question is not which party pays. It is whether the person who killed their daughter, sister or neighbour is found.

A reward is a public appeal for somebody who knows something to say it. It works when the person who knows is willing to speak, and it works faster when the police have the capacity to act on what they are told. That is the gap both announcements are aimed at, and it is the gap the families will measure them by.

Hill-Lewis’s proposals on the metro police are a policy argument about who should run the municipality after November. The lifestyle audit proposal, the hotspot deployment, the streetlights and the cameras are all things a council controls. The murder investigations themselves are not, because the SAPS answers to the national government and not to Ekurhuleni.

That division is worth holding onto as the campaign continues. A metro can fix a streetlight and staff a by-law unit. It cannot run a murder docket.

What happens next

Gauteng residents vote in the local government elections in November. The police investigation into the nine deaths continues, and anyone with information that could lead to an arrest can claim the R400 000 reward through the SAPS. The two victims who have been identified have been named by police, and the seven who have not remain the reason the appeals are still open.

Source: SABC News (website), DA pledges safer Ekurhuleni offers reward