Sixth woman's body found in Ekurhuleni since July, councillor says she was dumped

SABC News reports that the body of a woman was found beside a road in Kwa-Thema, in Ekurhuleni, on Tuesday morning, the sixth woman’s body recovered in the district since July.

City of Ekurhuleni ward councillor Sizwe Nhleko said residents were alerted through a community WhatsApp group and went to the scene. He said the condition of the body and the position of the scene led him to believe she had been left there rather than killed where she was found.

Police and forensic personnel were at the scene on Tuesday, working through the area for evidence.

What the councillor saw

Nhleko said the body had begun to decompose by the time residents arrived.

“This morning we just received a WhatsApp message from all the work groups saying that there’s a body found here of a woman,” he said. “We then rushed here to discover that the body was a woman and then you can see that the body was dumped here because when you check the scene you can see this incident never happened here but the body was starting to be decomposed.”

He said the information about the state of the body came from officers who examined it when they arrived, as they worked to establish how she died.

Five earlier discoveries, and a district waiting on answers

The Kwa-Thema case is the sixth in Ekurhuleni since July. The South African Police Service has not said the cases are linked, and it has not named the woman found on Tuesday. Forensic work at the scene is the first step in establishing who she was and how she died.

Ekurhuleni is a metro of more than 3,5 million people spread across townships and industrial belts from Kwa-Thema and Springs to Tembisa and Katlehong. Bodies found along its roads are usually found by people going to work, by schoolchildren walking, or, as in this case, by residents passing word along a WhatsApp group before any official arrives.

The practical consequence for families is a wait. A body that has begun to decompose can take time to identify, and until the police open a case and confirm an identity, a family searching for a missing relative has no confirmation either way. Anyone with information on a missing woman in the area can give it to their nearest police station, and the SAPS emergency number is 10111.

What the police have done, and what they have not said

Officers and forensic teams were deployed to the Kwa-Thema scene on Tuesday morning and are working it for clues. That is the response the record shows so far.

What the police have not done is confirm a link between the six discoveries, and they have not released the identity of the woman found on Tuesday. Both of those are open questions, and both matter to the families involved.

The Enquirer has asked the South African Police Service in Ekurhuleni for the number of cases opened since July, whether a task team has been assigned to them, and the circumstances of each discovery. We will report the answer when it comes.

A pattern a community is counting itself

The count of six is being kept by residents and by their councillor, not by an official statement. That is often how these numbers surface first in South Africa, through a community that notices before an institution announces.

The next dated step is the forensic examination of the Kwa-Thema scene, which will establish how the woman died and, if she is identified, open the way for a case to be registered and for her family to be told.