16/09/2026
*GIWUSA MEDIA ALERT*
*15 September 2026*
*GIWUSA CONDEMNS THE KILLING SPREE TARGETING WOMEN IN KEMPTON PARK AND ACROSS SOUTH AFRICA*
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) is outraged and grief-stricken by the murder of Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, a 38-year-old mother and runner, whose body was identified among five women found dead in the Kempton Park area over roughly two months.
Sister Moselakgomo left for a run on 10 September and never came home. Her eight-year-old daughter raised the alarm. That a woman cannot run, cannot move through her own neighbourhood, cannot live without the threat of violent death is a condemnation of a society organised around profit, exploitation and patriarchal domination.
GIWUSA sends its condolences to her family, her child, and all who loved her. We mourn with every family that has lost a mother, daughter, sister, or friend to this slaughter.
The discovery of multiple women’s bodies in one area over a short period points to something beyond isolated crimes. It suggests a pattern, a predator or predators enabled by impunity. The police must move with urgency and rigour to determine whether these killings are connected and to bring those responsible before the courts.
GIWUSA welcomes the decision by the South African Police Service to establish a dedicated, multi-disciplinary investigative team to probe these murders. We understand this team will bring together detectives, forensic experts, tracking capacity, canine search units, and investigative psychology resources. We also note the commitment from provincial police leadership that investigators are pursuing every credible line of inquiry continuously. This is the kind of serious response these crimes require. But a team on paper is not justice. The commitment must produce arrests, charges, and successful prosecutions. Families cannot be left waiting for years while leads go cold and communities remain terrified. There must be no complacency, no foot-dragging, and no failure to follow every available thread.
GIWUSA further insists that policing must be subject to democratic community monitoring. Working-class communities cannot be passive recipients of police promises. Community oversight structures must have the resources, information, and authority to monitor whether gender-based violence and other violent crimes are actually prioritised. They must be able to track case progress, station-level resource allocation, response times, and whether investigations are being stalled or neglected. Where the state treats violence against women and poor communities as low priority, communities must have the power to expose it and demand accountability, including removal of station commanders.
We also emphasise the need for independent community defence structures. These must be democratically controlled, accountable to residents, and rooted in working-class communities—not vigilante formations, but organised structures capable of preventing violence, accompanying women, securing safe routes, and providing first response where the state neglects working-class areas. Such structures must be resourced, trained, and supported, with clear safeguards against abuse. Public funds should be directed towards community-led safety initiatives, not only towards policing that too often protects property and privilege while neglecting the poor. This is not a call for more state policing as such; it is a demand for community power over safety.
The violence visited upon women in this country is not a sudden eruption. It is the logical outcome of a system that treats human beings as commodities, that is predicated on domination and exploitation, rewards violence and that has historically relegated women to the status of property, exploited and oppressed gender. Under capitalism, the bodies of women—especially working-class and poor women—are treated as source of free or degraded labour and objects of sexual gratification. The streets are unsafe not because of a few “bad apples” but because the entire social order is oppressive, rotten to its core and blindly leading society to social decadence and barbarism.
The state has failed working-class communities. Working-class areas face generalised neglect: under-resourced public services, crumbling infrastructure, mass unemployment, poverty, and a state that prioritises property and privilege while treating poor communities as afterthoughts. The problem is not simply a shortage of police; it is a system that allocates protection according to class and race and treats working-class life as expendable. The criminal justice system grinds slowly while women continue to die. Poverty, inequality, and the collapse of social infrastructure create the conditions in which this violence thrives.
GIWUSA rejects the notion that women must curtail their freedoms to survive. Women should not have to stay indoors, avoid exercise, or alter their lives because the state cannot guarantee their safety. The responsibility lies with the state, with the police, and with all of us to create conditions where every person can live free from fear.
*We call for:*
- An immediate, properly resourced, and intelligence-led investigation into these murders and any links between them.
- The swift arrest and prosecution of those responsible.
- The establishment of community monitoring bodies with real power to oversee policing priorities, especially gender-based violence and violent crime.
- The resourcing, training, and support of independent, democratically accountable community defence structures.
- A fundamental reorientation of policing towards protecting working-class communities, not harassing them.
- The allocation of resources to community-based safety initiatives, including women-led organisations working on the ground.
- A national reckoning with the structural violence of patriarchy and capitalism that makes such atrocities possible.
- The establishment and capacitation of gender commissions in every trade union, working-class community civic, and youth movement, to lead in building a genuine socialist feminist movement that advances the fight against catastrophic levels of gender-based violence and the struggle for gender equality in general.
We further call upon the labour movement and all progressive formations to mobilise. This is not just a women’s issue. This is a working-class issue. This is a human issue. Every worker who stays silent in the face of this onslaught is complicit in it. Our collective strength must be directed at dismantling the systems that produce this violence and building a society where women are free, safe, and valued.
Elizabeth Moselakgomo is not just a statistic. She was a mother, a runner, a human being with dreams and a life that mattered. Her daughter will grow up without her. That child’s loss is our loss. That child’s grief is a monument to our collective failure. So are the losses of all the relatives and loved ones of the four and many other women lost to these gruesome acts of Gender-Based violence.
This is another tragic and awakening moment calling for action— a real, sustained, systemic action— now.
*Issued by:*
The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA)
