‘Our bodies are crime scenes’: South Africa’s murdered women

Tshegofatso Pule was eight months pregnant when she was murdered and her body hung from a tree on June 5, 2020. This is her story and the story of the other women murdered by men on that day in a country where a woman is killed every four hours.

Johannesburg, South Africa – As the winter sun dipped below the horizon on a cold Wednesday evening last June, hundreds of women, men and children gathered sombrely on the streets of Meadowlands in Soweto. Dressed in black, and clutching pink balloons and flickering candles, the crowd – some hand-in-hand, many with tears in their eyes – made their way to the home of Tshegofatso Pule, the words of an old anti-apartheid struggle song echoing in the air around them. “Senzeni na, senzeni na (what have we done?),” they sang, paying their final respects to a life lost too soon. It would be the first of many gatherings in her name.