Inter-ministerial committee briefs media on Ekurhuleni women's murders

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide briefed the media in Pretoria on Sunday afternoon on the government’s response to the recent discovery of the bodies of murdered women in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.

As SABC News reported on 20 September 2026, the briefing was co-chaired by the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, and the Minister of Social Development, Dina Pule. The committee used the session to set out what it described as “all-of-government actions” being undertaken in response to the killings.

An inter-ministerial committee is the standing mechanism South African presidents use to coordinate departments around a single issue that crosses portfolios. On gender-based violence and femicide, that means policing sits alongside social development, health, justice and the Presidency’s women’s ministry, rather than being handled by any one department alone.

That structure is the reason the briefing was led by Chikunga and Pule rather than by the police ministry. It also shapes what the committee can announce. Operational matters such as arrests, dockets and forensic work belong to the South African Police Service, while the committee’s remit covers the coordination of prevention, support for victims and survivors, and the state’s longer-term GBVF response.

SABC News carried the briefing live on its YouTube channel, with credit to Patricia Visagie, and described it as an update to the media and the public on actions taken since the bodies were found.

The source material for this report is the SABC News briefing itself. It does not contain the number of women found, the dates of the discoveries, the names of the victims, the status of any police investigation or any detail of what the ministers told the media beyond the framing of the briefing. The Enquirer has not been able to verify those details from the material available and has not supplied them.

What the briefing does establish is that the national government has moved the Ekurhuleni deaths onto the agenda of its central GBVF coordinating body, and that two ministers were sent to account for that response in public. For residents of the affected communities, that is the practical significance: the case now sits with a committee that spans the departments responsible for policing, prosecution, health care and survivor support.

The committee’s public account of its actions, and any further detail on the investigations in Ekurhuleni, will follow from the departments involved.