Tenth Woman's Body Found Near Johannesburg: What Police Know
Police in South Africa recovered the body of a woman on the morning of Saturday, September 26, 2026, in a cemetery in Tembisa, north-east of central Johannesburg. Police in Gauteng province say it is the tenth body of a woman found in the province in recent months. BBC
A friend identified the latest victim. The two had been together at a bar the previous evening. Police have not released her name or cause of death. Tembisa borders Kempton Park, where most of the bodies found since July were discovered.
Gauteng Police Commissioner Tommy Mthombeni said it was too soon to say whether the latest death was linked to the others. Gauteng police said they could not rule out a serial killer on the loose, meaning a person who kills several people over time. Investigators have noted similarities across the 10 deaths in Ekurhuleni, the municipal area east of Johannesburg that includes Kempton Park, and another death in Soweto. BBC
The count now stands at ten. Police imposed a lockdown, with tighter patrols and checks, in Kempton Park in the Ekurhuleni municipality after the ninth body was found. Al Jazeera That ninth body was found along a road in KwaThema, Springs, on Tuesday, September 15. Three men appeared in court earlier this week accused of involvement in one of the nine murders. Police had earlier reported the arrest of three people over the death of a woman whose body was found east of Johannesburg last week. Reuters
The victims were mostly women in their 20s or 30s. Reuters Police said many of the previous victims were young women and almost all had suffered extreme violence before death. Some were found stripped of their clothes and showing signs of sexual violence.
Police recorded 5,427 murders in South Africa between April and June this year. In that same three-month period, the South African Human Rights Commission said 569 women were killed and 1,052 others survived attempted murder. Less than a year ago, South African ministers declared gender-based violence, violence directed at women because they are women, a national disaster. BBC
The broader context here is about the investigation as much as the crimes. A tight cluster of locations, a repeated victim profile, and similarities noted by police raise the question of linkage that Mthombeni declined to answer. The Kempton Park lockdown, arrests tied to a single case, and the separate Soweto death point to an inquiry still deciding whether it faces one pattern or several. For officials working under a national disaster declaration on gender-based violence, the test will be forensic coordination across Ekurhuleni stations, clear public warnings about risk, and charges that hold beyond first court appearances.
