By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
Elizabeth "Tsontso" Moselakgomo went out for a run on September 9 and did not come home. Her eight-year-old daughter raised the alarm; relatives called police; the search went viral. On Saturday, her body was found. Relatives identified her Monday, according to the Guardian.
Moselakgomo, 38, is one of seven women whose bodies have been discovered in recent weeks around O.R. Tambo International Airport outside Johannesburg — five of them in the past seven days alone. The discoveries have set off what the Guardian describes as an outpouring of fear, grief and anger over South Africa's stalled progress against femicide.
No suspect or motive has been publicly confirmed in the reporting available to this desk, and police have not been quoted describing a link between the cases beyond their geographic clustering. That uncertainty is itself part of the story: residents interviewed by the Guardian describe a climate of dread, summed up in the phrase used in coverage — "we are prey."
South Africa has among the highest femicide rates in the world, a fact activists have raised for years with limited policy response. This report draws on a single Guardian account; the pattern connecting the seven deaths, and any arrests, had not been established as of filing.
The case lands amid a separate diplomatic strain: the U.S. State Department, under Secretary Marco Rubio, has moved to limit visas for South African officials over what Washington calls unaddressed concerns about anti-white discrimination, the BBC reports — a dispute running on an entirely different track from the femicide crisis, but a reminder of how fraught South Africa's relationship with Washington has become on multiple fronts at once.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE —
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian and BBC World.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."