Men kill, not love women

Someone on the East Rand is violently killing women. 11 bodies have been found to date.

This is my home turf and where I earned my journalist stripes.

90s murderer stopped before killing more

I remember the largely forgotten ’90s case of paedophile murderer Christiaan de Wet (confirmed victims: 2).

He’d surely have been a serial killer if he hadn’t been apprehended. I went to school with his disbelieving girlfriend; I waitressed with the estranged mother of his child, who fled the country overnight when he was arrested.

I may, too, have briefly met South Africa’s most prolific serial killer, Moses Sithole (confirmed victims: 38), back when they were still looking for him, when I was working the crime beat at my local paper, and a softly-spoken everyday guy walked in the door, largely unremarkable.

Serial killers in the past

We discussed something; he asked me for a lift; I said no, and then he went on his way, looking wounded, a sliver of rage in his eyes (or did I imagine that detail later when Sithole was arrested and charged?).

A couple of weeks afterwards, I was the first reporter at the scene when yet another woman’s remains were found, but I couldn’t say if that was a Sithole victim or another female brutally strangled and dumped.

In retrospect, wasn’t there another East Rand killer? Was it him in the office that day? So many women, so many bodies; it’s easy to get confused.

Copycat or new killer?

So are these latest Ekurhuleni murders the work of a new serial killer?

A serial killer is one bogeyman. But if these murders are unrelated, then these ten beloved women found stripped and beaten to death are simply an ongoing chain of killings committed by any number of men, which is surely even more frightening, more depressing – and more statistically likely.

As has been widely reported, over 50 000 cases of gender-based violence and femicide were registered with South African police stations in the last year – figures that represent just the tip of a particularly chilling iceberg.

Highest rates of femicide

At 12.2 intentional homicides per 100 000 women, South Africa has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world.

And the fact remains that the majority of cases of gender-based violence are perpetrated by men known to the victim.

Women are statistically most at risk when they should be safest: when in the company of the very men who purport to love them best.