The discovery of the bodies of eight women around Johannesburg's international airport, including five in the past week, has prompted an outpouring of fear, grief and anger over South Africa's failure to stem a femicide crisis the president himself declared a national emergency less than a year ago. The case that crystallised the country's grief is that of Elizabeth "Tsontso" Moselakgomo, a 38-year-old runner whose disappearance after a training run on 9 September went viral before her body was found on Saturday and identified by relatives on Monday. Her eight-year-old daughter was the one who alerted relatives when she did not come home, setting off a search that ended in the worst possible way. ## A Pattern Around OR Tambo Police said in a statement on Saturday that four women's bodies had been found since 15 July in Kempton Park, across the highway from OR Tambo international airport. All were half-naked and showed visible bruising, according to the statement, which urged women to change how they moved through the area. The grim tally kept growing. On Monday and Tuesday, two more bodies were found in the town of Olifantsfontein, about 15 miles north of Kempton Park. On Tuesday, police reported another woman's body, naked and decomposed, 25 miles to the south-east. On Wednesday, acting police minister Firoz Cachalia said a body found in Olifantsfontein on 7 September was being added to the investigation, bringing the total to eight. Specialist officers are leading the inquiry. In their Saturday statement they warned: "Women in and around Kempton Park are urged not to walk or run alone, particularly in isolated areas. They should avoid secluded spaces, remain vigilant and, where possible, travel or exercise in groups." Detectives initially said they were examining a serial killer angle, but on Monday police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe told reporters: "For now, nothing tells us that we've got a serial killer." She added that a suspect in the July killing of the first victim, the woman's boyfriend, is in custody. President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday that he had directed police authorities to prioritise the ongoing murder investigations. ## A Country Where Women Are Prey The warnings landed badly with a population that has heard them before. "We are tired of being told to be vigilant when women are already doing everything possible to stay alive," said the advocacy group Women For Change. "It should not take a missing woman, a desperate family, runners and communities searching, and a case going viral, before an area is searched with this intensity." The statistics explain the fury. South Africa has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world. Women were killed at a rate of 12.2 per 100,000 people in 2022, nearly six times the global rate, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. After hundreds of women protested on the eve of the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November 2025, President Ramaphosa declared gender-based violence a national crisis, yet campaigners say the lack of a concrete plan has left them watching the death toll climb. "In this country we are prey," Sakane Mokoena, Moselakgomo's friend and fellow runner, posted on Instagram after the death was confirmed. Campaigners responded to the latest killings by calling on men to confront the violence directly. "When some of these things happen in our presence, most of us men tend to look the other way," said Bafana Khumalo, co-executive director of Sonke Gender Justice. "We need, as men, to begin to face each other squarely and hold each other accountable." ## A Runner Remembered Behind the statistics, the grief is personal. Mokoena met Moselakgomo about two years ago when she joined a running club so she would not have to train alone on Saturdays. "She always spoke about her daughter. Tsontso always said 'Bye guys, I have to go, I have to go to my child'," Mokoena said, describing her friend as funny, joyful and "very, very kind". Running clubs across South Africa have organised memorial events in her name, and Mokoena said she hopes the attention forces real change. "I'm just happy that the world, or at least our country, was standing still for a moment to acknowledge what is happening," she said. "Let's get this out there and figure out exactly what is happening to women." Whether the investigations around OR Tambo produce arrests beyond the one suspect already in custody will shape public trust in the police. The geography of the case is itself a warning. OR Tambo is the country’s busiest airport and the front door for November’s G20 visitors, yet the corridor of towns around it, from Kempton Park to Olifantsfontein, has now produced eight female victims in seven weeks. The contrast between the area’s economic importance and the safety of the women who live beside it is the image campaigners say should define the government’s response. For now, the eight deaths in seven weeks around one airport corridor have become the measure of a promise made at the G20 and still unfulfilled: that South Africa’s women would finally stop being killed at a rate no country should accept.