Fifth body found near Kempton Park as residents blame long grass and dark streets

eNCA reports that a fifth woman’s body has been found near Kempton Park, and that the discovery has renewed concern among residents about how safe the area is for women and girls. The channel’s report, published on 14 September 2026, sets out the conditions residents say surround the places where the bodies were found. You can watch the broadcast here:

The concern is concentrated on the ground itself. The areas around the railway station and the R21 are named in the report as places where the grass is often left uncut. It grows long enough to screen a person from the road, and residents say that is what makes women travelling between Kempton Park and Tembisa, whether they are using the railway station or walking the route, vulnerable to rape.

What residents say the tall grass does

The report does not treat the overgrown verges as a cosmetic problem. Long grass, residents argue, sits behind more than robbery and mugging. Rape happens in those same spaces, they say, precisely because the grass is tall enough to hide what is happening in it.

The point residents make is about service delivery, and they make it in gendered terms. Cutting the grass is not a landscaping item on a municipal list. It is the difference between a route a woman can walk and a route she cannot.

Broken lights, quiet streets, thin patrols

The second concern in the report is lighting. Streetlights in the areas where the bodies were found are not working, according to the broadcast. Those are secluded places, the kind a person would not expect to be approached in while running or jogging, and the lack of light makes it easier for a perpetrator to hide.

The report names a third factor alongside the grass and the dark: the lack of police visibility. Those areas, residents say, should be visited often so that women and girls can feel safer using them.

The responsibility question

The report puts the responsibility for safety where residents say it belongs. Women and girls should not have to carry the job of feeling safe, the broadcast states. That job belongs to the country and to the police.

That is a fair way to state the obligation. Under the Constitution, the South African Police Service carries the duty to prevent, combat and investigate crime, and to protect the inhabitants of the Republic and their property. No resident, and no group of residents, can substitute for that duty. The safety of a footpath between two towns is a policing and municipal question, not a private one.

What residents are asking for

The asks set out in the report are specific and within the reach of the institutions responsible. Cut the grass on the verges around the railway station and the R21. Repair the streetlights where they are not working. Put patrols through the secluded stretches often enough that the people who use them can see a police presence.

Each of those sits with a named authority. Municipal verges and public lighting fall to the City of Ekurhuleni. Visible patrols, investigation and prosecution fall to the South African Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority. A fifth body found in the same general area is a matter for a police investigation, and the public interest in that investigation is legitimate.

What happens next

The report does not name a suspect, an arrest or a court date, and this masthead will not supply one. The next dated step belongs to the police investigation into the five deaths, and to the City of Ekurhuleni and the SAPS on the grass, the lights and the patrols residents have asked for. The families of the five women are waiting on the first of those.

Source: eNCA (YouTube). Read the original item.