Police identify Dineo Motapane as eighth woman found dead in Ekurhuleni since July

Dineo Evelyn Motapane, 38, was identified by her family at the Springs Mortuary on Wednesday afternoon, becoming the eighth woman whose body has been found in Ekurhuleni since the middle of July.

Her body was discovered on the side of a road in KwaThema, Springs, on 15 September. Police say she was last seen alive on Sunday, and that her family had not reported her missing before she was found.

The latest identification comes as the South African Police Service works through a series of deaths of women across the East Rand that now stretches back two months. As IOL reported on 16 September, the family made the identification at the Springs Mortuary.

What police have confirmed

Acting National Commissioner of SAPS Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane expressed condolences to the Motapane family and said investigators remain on the ground in KwaThema.

“A multidisciplinary team of investigators and specialists continues to work around the clock to establish the circumstances surrounding each case, identify those responsible and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice,” Dimpane said.

The team is drawn from detectives, forensic specialists and pathologists, the structure SAPS uses when cases in one area may share a cause. Police have said they are working to establish whether the deaths are linked. They have not said that they are.

Police have called on the public to come forward with any information that could help identify those responsible.

The cases so far

The first body was found on 15 July, when a 37-year-old woman was discovered naked and restrained with cable ties in an open field in Kempton Park. A suspect, reported to be her partner, was arrested on 17 July in connection with her murder.

Itumeleng Kekana’s body was found in Kempton Park on 3 August.

On 7 September, the body of a woman believed to be in her late twenties was found in a river in Clayville, Olifantsfontein, near Thembisa Mall. She was found without clothing apart from underwear. A second unidentified woman was found in Olifantsfontein the same day.

On 10 September, an unidentified woman was found near Kempton Park. Her body was naked and in an advanced state of decomposition, and police are using forensic processes to establish her identity.

On 12 September, the remains of 38-year-old Elizabeth Moselakgomo, known as Tsontso, were found partially naked and bruised in Rhodesfield, Kempton Park. Her family identified her on 14 September.

On 14 September, a passer-by alerted authorities to another unidentified woman’s body in Olifantsfontein, also partially naked and bruised.

Motapane’s body was found on 15 September. She was naked and in a state of decomposition.

What this means on the ground

For families in Kempton Park, Olifantsfontein, Clayville, Thembisa and KwaThema, the practical effect is a set of open cases and a police appeal for information that has not yet produced an arrest in most of them. Three of the eight women have been publicly identified. Five have not.

That gap matters. A body that cannot be named cannot be investigated through the people who knew her, and it cannot be claimed by a family that does not know she is gone. The forensic work to identify the remaining women is the first step in each of those cases, and it is the reason the identification of Motapane on Wednesday is being treated as a development rather than an ending.

The SAPS multidisciplinary team is the state’s standing instrument for exactly this situation, used when a cluster of cases in one region may be connected. It combines detectives, forensic analysts and pathologists under one command so that evidence from one case can be tested against another.

The police have not said the deaths are the work of one person or one group, and the record does not yet support that conclusion. One arrest has been made, in the 15 July case, and that case has a named suspect.

What happens next

Investigators are working to identify the five women whose bodies have not been named, and to establish whether any of the eight cases are linked. SAPS has asked anyone with information to contact the police.

Source: IOL, KwaThema body: Another victim identified as police probe murders of eight women.