Congo ex-president Kabila visits rebel-held Goma for talks, associates say
May 28 (Reuters) - Congolese former president Joseph Kabila has arrived in the rebel-held eastern city of Goma for talks with locals, three people close to him told Reuters, a month after declaring he wanted to help end the crisis in the war-ravaged region.
If confirmed, the visit could complicate a U.S.-backed bid to end a rebellion by the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group in eastern Congo, which contains valuable minerals that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is keen to help mine.
Kabila, who has denied accusations by Kinshasa that he supports the M23 insurgency, agreed to step down following protests and external pressure in 2018 after almost two decades in power. He has been out of the country since late 2023, mostly in South Africa.
The three people said the former president will begin holding consultations on Wednesday with citizens in Goma, which fell under the control of M23 in January during an advance that has seen the group seize more ground than ever before.
The people close to Kabila said he had arrived in Goma on Sunday night. Corneille Nangaa, leader of the rebel alliance that includes M23, has also said on social media that Kabila is in Goma, though Kabila himself has not spoken and no images of him in Goma have been published.
The reported visit follows a vote in the Senate in Kinshasa last week overwhelmingly in favour of lifting his immunity from prosecution over his alleged links to M23.
Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said in a briefing aired on state television Tuesday that Kabila was "positioning himself as the rebel leader" along with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Kabila is wanted in Congo for alleged crimes against humanity for supporting the insurgency in the east, including a role in the massacre of civilians. Congo has also moved to suspend his political party and seize the assets of its leaders.
In a speech on Friday evening, Kabila said Congo's justice system was being "openly exploited for political ends" and was "nothing more than an instrument of oppression" for President Felix Tshisekedi's government.
Kabila, who came to power in 2001 after his father's assassination, clung to office following Congo's disputed 2018 election for almost two years through an awkward power-sharing deal with Tshisekedi. Tshisekdi cut him out at the end of 2020 by chipping away at his influence and accusing him of blocking reforms.
The two men's relationship has since soured to the point that, as M23 marched on east Congo's second-largest city of Bukavu in February, Tshisekedi told the Munich Security Conference that Kabila had sponsored the insurgency.
Washington is pushing for a peace agreement to be signed this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region, Massad Boulos, Trump's senior adviser for Africa, told Reuters earlier this month.
The United Nations and Western governments say Rwanda has provided arms and troops to M23. Rwanda denies backing M23 and says its military has acted in self-defence against Congo's army and a militia founded by perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.
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The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rusted screws, metal spikes and plastic rubbish: the horrific sexual violence used against Tigray's women
For two years, Tseneat carried her rape inside her. The agony never faded. It attacked her from the inside out. The remnants of the attack stayed in Tseneat's womb – not as a memory or metaphor, but a set of physical objects: Eight rusted screws. A steel pair of nail clippers. A note, written in ballpoint pen and wrapped in plastic. 'Sons of Eritrea, we are brave,' the note reads. 'We have committed ourselves to this, and we will continue doing it. We will make Tigrayan females infertile.' The objects, revealed by X-ray and surgically extracted by doctors more than two years later, were forced inside Tseneat as she lay unconscious after being gang-raped by six soldiers. She is one of tens of thousands of Tigrayan women subjected to the most extreme forms of sexual violence, in attacks designed to destroy their fertility. Medical records and X-rays obtained by the Guardian and reviewed by independent medical specialists show a pattern of cases where women have had foreign bodies forced into their reproductive organs, including nails, screws, plastic rubbish, sand, gravel and letters. Under international law, it is genocide to destroy fertility or prevent births with the intention of wholly or partly destroying an ethnic group. The letters – written by their rapists, wrapped in plastic and inserted into the women's uteruses – make their intentions clear. Several mention bitter border disputes with Tigray in the 1990s, and promise vengeance. In another note, extracted by the hospital from a different woman, is written: 'Have you forgotten what you did to us in the 90s? We did not forget. From now on, no Tigrayan will give birth to another Tigrayan.' Tseneat had given birth to twins seven days before the attack, and was breastfeeding when the men arrived. She lived in eastern Tigray, in Zalambessa, a town bordering Eritrea. The soldiers arrived at her home on 25 November 2020, shortly after the war began. After questioning her about the whereabouts of her husband, the men dragged Tseneat outside. 'I tried to resist and I cried and they beat me,' she says, weeping. They kicked her in the head with their military boots until she bled out of her ears. 'Then they all raped me.' At some point during the attack, she says, a soldier injected something into her leg, and she lost consciousness. As she came to, the soldiers were talking. 'I heard one saying, 'She has given birth to twins, who are like her. Kill her.'' Another replied. ''No, she is already dead. Leave her and she will die herself. She does not need a bullet.'' Tseanat did not die. For six months, her mother nursed her. There were no medical facilities functioning in the area but she knew something was terribly wrong: she was in constant pain, and fragments of plastic and debris would occasionally pass from her vagina. It was almost two years before Tseneat finally approached a medical clinic for help. 'I was stressed, I had a bad smell and the other women were not willing to be with me. I was crying outside the clinic. The sister asked me, 'If you are willing, let's check your womb.'' After removing the materials visible through her cervix, the staff performed X-rays to check for more foreign bodies. The image they produced is difficult to comprehend: at the centre of Tseneat's uterus, between her hip bones, lies a pair of metal nail clippers. When they were removed, they were rusting, says Sister Roman, who treated her. Tseneat says she thinks often of ending her life. 'I think of dying,' she says. 'I think of committing suicide.' She says she has one enduring desire: 'Justice must be served and those who are responsible must be accountable. I would be happy then.' Tigray is often described as a forgotten war. If it has been forgotten, it is not by those who endured it, but by the global powers that looked away from one of the most brutal conflicts of this century. It began in November 2020, after Ethiopia's prime minister, the Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed, sent in the army to oust Tigray's regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which he alleged was a threat to national security. The Ethiopian military invaded, joined by forces from the country's then-ally, Eritrea, and militias from the nearby Ethiopian region of Amhara. Where is Tigray? Tigray is the most northern of Ethiopia's 11 regional states, lying along the southern border of Eritrea with Sudan to the west. How did the war start? Years of tensions erupted into war in November 2020. Ethiopia's prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who had inflamed hostilities by delaying federal elections, alleged that Tigray's ruling party had attacked a military camp in the state capital, Mekelle. He sent in troops to oust the state government and ordered a communications blackout. Who is involved? The invasion became a joint effort between three parties: Ethiopia, Eritrea, and regional forces from Tigray's neighbouring state of Amhara. Ethiopia's prime minister denied the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray for months, despite it becoming clear he had formed an alliance with the country's former enemy to mobilise both nations' armies. Amhara has long-standing territorial disputes with Tigray and its own tensions with the federal government – they, too, sent troops. On the other side, the ruling party in Tigray's regional government, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), founded and mobilised its own army when the war began, the Tigray Defence Forces, and was joined by militias from the ethnically marginalised Oromo people. Why are they fighting? Each party has a complex history of disputes. Ethiopia has a federal system, and historically its states have maintained a high level of autonomy. Tigray's ruling party, the TPLF, had been a dominant force in national politics, and led the coalition which ruled Ethiopia for three decades until 2018. The group lost much of its power when Abiy Ahmed was elected prime minister in April 2018, and a political rift began to grow between the TPLF and Abiy's administration. Eritrea and Amhara both have long-standing territorial disputes with Tigray. Eritrea brought violence along Tigray's border during the two decades of the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, a conflict which saw Abiy awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending in 2019. What happened during the conflict? The war resulted in massive civilian casualties, with atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by all parties. As troops moved into Tigray, Ethiopia blockaded the region, preventing journalists, UN agencies and aid from entering and limiting information getting out. Tigray quickly descended into an acute hunger crisis. By the time the ceasefire was signed in November 2022, academics estimated that between 300,000 and 800,000 people had died from violence or starvation as a result of the blockade. The capital Mekelle was decimated. Rates of sexual violence were extreme: surveys indicate that around 10% of Tigrayan women were raped during the conflict. Is the conflict over? The war formally ended in 2022, but violence in the region has continued and is reported to be again escalating. By mid-2025 Eritrean troops were still occupying chunks of Tigray, according to the UN, and continue to be accused of mass rape, arbitrary detention and looting. Large-scale sexual violence by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the region continues: NGOs have documented hundreds of cases of rape since hostilities ended, and concluded that "the scale and nature of these violations has not materially changed". Now, there are fears the region could descend into war again, after fresh conflicts erupted between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and between Ethiopia's federal government and Amhara state. In the months that followed, Ethiopia imposed a blockade on Tigray, prohibited foreign journalists from visiting and stopped aid, plunging the region into an escalating hunger crisis. Even with a near-total information blackout, reports of human rights abuses emerged, including massacres of hundreds of civilians and the widespread rape of Tigrayan women by government-affiliated forces. By the time a ceasefire was signed in November 2022, between 300,000 and 800,000 civilians had been killed, researchers from the University of Ghent estimate – either directly in the violence, or by starvation as a result of the blockade. There is evidence of abuses committed by all parties, but by far the largest number of alleged atrocities were by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. Randomised surveying conducted by BMJ found that about 10% of Tigray's women were subjected to sexual violence. About 70% of those were gang-raped. When the war broke out, Dr Abraha Gebreegziabher was the head of pediatrics at Tigray's largest hospital, Ayder in Mekelle. Abraha began working with colleagues in gynaecology and obstetrics as women and children who had been raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces began to arrive. The first were a group of six girls – all under 18, he says. 'That was very painful.' When they detected their first case of a woman with objects inserted into her womb, Abraha says staff were shocked. 'To us, it was a very painful new phenomenon: we had never heard of this gang-rape and insertion of foreign bodies into women,' he says. 'Even witnessing one case was too painful to bear.' But the women continued to arrive. Abraha, now the hospital's chief clinical director, recalls treating three, and says the clinic attached to the hospital was able to produce medical records for at least five who were operated on. The true number will be many, many times higher. Large numbers of women would not survive the initial attacks, or their aftermath, he says. 'When they have sharp ends, [these objects] are known for migration,' Abraha says. One woman treated in the hospital told staff that nails and screws had been pushed into her uterus. When the medical team performed X-rays, they found the nails in her gastrointestinal tract. 'They may perforate large vessels – bleeding of which can be fatal automatically,' he says. For the survivors, rape remains extremely stigmatising, and women avoid seeking medical care or disclosing their injuries. Many were told by soldiers they would be killed if they sought help. Of those that did make it to hospitals, a significant proportion are unrecorded: medical notes were destroyed in the conflict, or not kept at all in clinics where health workers were threatened for treating survivors of rape. 'The combined invaders during that period were threatening any healthcare providers assisting such women – any healthcare worker assisting the survivors in any way was assumed a traitor. So there was an attempt to hide scared survivors,' Abraha says. Raped women told hospital staff how 'Ethiopian National Defence Forces soldiers warned them not to visit healthcare facilities, otherwise they would find them and kill them', Abraha says. 'Some didn't finish basic lab tests and post-exposure prophylaxis. They just went out and disappeared.' At a clinic in Mekelle, a team of nuns who provided medical care during the war maintained a single, locked cupboard where they kept a cache of evidence of the crimes against these women: X-rays, medical records, and even the objects themselves. 'These foreign bodies are documented and also held in our storage – a lot of foreign bodies, anything, either plastics, metal objects, anything around them are introduced into their reproductive organs,' says Sister Mulu, who led the clinic. She leafs through X-rays, pulling out imaging of yet another abdomen – bisected by a sharp, curved metal spike and a thick bolt. 'This was intentional,' Sister Mulu says. 'Intentionally they make them carry [these objects], for the suffering.' This tiny clinic, in a single-storey, four-room house, received 7,000-8,000 survivors of sexual violence, cases extreme in their brutality. Those being interviewed by the Guardian include women who were wrapped in plastic and set on fire, shot in the genitals, mutilated with scissors or disfigured with acid. 'I'm very traumatised,' Sister Mulu says. 'Thousands of these stories are in my head, in my mind. I'm psychologically disturbed. I can't sleep, and my appetite is very poor because in the night, I see and I hear their stories. I have a big scar in my mind. 'They need justice. We need justice throughout the world.' Justice may be a long time coming. Tseneat, along with other Tigrayan women speaking to the Guardian, says she was raped by Eritrean soldiers working alongside Ethiopian troops. Eritrea is not a party to the peace deal between Tigray's leaders and the Ethiopian government, nor will it be participating in the 'transitional justice' project currently touted by Ethiopia's leadership. Eritrea's president, Isaias Afwerki, has dismissed the allegations as make-believe. 'Everybody talking about human rights violations here and there, rape, looting, this is a fantasy,' he said in 2023. (Isaias rarely responds to non-state media; this 2023 comment constitutes his latest substantive response to the allegations.) The Eritrean government has refused to engage with the international investigation team set up to examine human rights violations in Tigray and, according to the UN, there is 'no likely prospect that the domestic judicial system will hold perpetrators accountable for the violations'. Physicians for Human Rights, which has gathered hundreds of medical records and health worker interviews about the war, says it has 'very serious concerns' about the transitional justice process. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion 'The Eritrean military was a primary perpetrator of very brutal conflict-related sexual violence in Tigray, and they are not party to the transitional justice process,' says Lindsey Green, PHR's deputy director of research, who has overseen its medical record reviews in Tigray. 'This leaves a huge gap for survivors in accessing justice and accountability if this entire group of perpetrators is not included in the process at all.' Abiy, Ethiopia's prime minister, faces allegations of war crimes by his military forces but has had no charges or sanctions laid at his door. A handful of soldiers have been charged for participating in massacres or raping women. Ethiopia repeatedly pushed to defund a UN-backed probe into the abuses, and the commission was finally disbanded in 2023 with no resolution to continue its mandate. Two advisers to the joint UN-Ethiopian human rights investigation, Aaron Maasho and Martin Witteveen, wrote last year that the transitional justice policy had become a 'farce', making it 'all but certain that the Ethiopian government will successfully sweep its atrocities in Tigray under the rug'. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments did not respond to Guardian requests for comment. While the war is officially over, the violence in Tigray continues. Research since the ceasefire shows sexual violence by security forces has continued unabated. According to the Office of the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR), Eritrean soldiers continue to occupy significant parts of Tigray, particularly eastern regions, where they are 'committing violations, including abductions, rape, property looting and arbitrary arrests'. And now, rising tensions between the Ethiopian government and armed groups in Amhara and Oromio leave the entire region vulnerable to toppling into civil war again. Many of the women speaking to the Guardian allege they were held and repeatedly raped at military bases by both Ethiopian and Eritrean forces – reports that indicate sexual violence against Tigrayan woman was systematic, and to some extent condoned by military hierarchies. On a hilltop outside the city of Adwa, Alana's* rubber sandals scuff over the jagged, stony ground. The spot is desolate. A single, unpaved road curls down the rocky hillside. Today, little remains of the place Alana, 32, was held but the grey cinder block walls. Two years ago in this building, used as a military base in Adi Berak, women say they were repeatedly raped by occupying soldiers. Alana says she was thrown into a cell with another woman, Maeza*, who was about 25. Huddled together, they exchanged phone numbers and the names of family members, promising that if one of them escaped, she would seek help for the other. Alana says Maeza was raped by 14 soldiers before she died – men who then made Alana dig a grave for her friend. She was finally released after her family raised a large sum of money to exchange for her, and she found Maeza's brother to tell him what had happened. When they returned to try to find Maeza's grave, she says, she could not identify it: there were too many corpses left by the soldiers, dumped in hasty mass graves as the war ended. A number of survivors tell the Guardian they were held captive at the bases alongside dozens of others. Hana*, 21, was abducted from home by 10 Eritrean soldiers and held for four days at a military base. Approximately 60 women were being held, she says, and she has no idea if they survived. 'They first locked me in a room. Then, over four days, I was raped repeatedly. At the end, they poured acid on my head.' 'I woke up on the road. The Eritrean soldiers had dumped me there, like I was nothing.' The acid burned through her hair and skin, eating away a thick layer of flesh across her scalp. Now, a mottled, tight layer of scar tissue covers her head, causing constant pain. 'I can't sleep at night,' she says. 'It hurts all the time, and the itching never stops.' To heal, she would require plastic surgery. There are no resources available for her to receive it. All of the women being interviewed by the Guardian have sustained significant internal or external injuries, and most need ongoing medical interventions, surgeries and medication. Yet their access to already-limited help is being severed by huge cuts to aid from the US. Nearly 90% of the women who experienced sexual violence during Tigray's war have not received any form of medical or psychological assistance, with about half citing a lack of medical facilities as the reason. For the women who survived the insertion of objects, living with this kind of foreign body means 'severe and long-lasting adverse health consequences and injuries', says Dr Rose Olson, an internal medicine specialist and instructor at Harvard medical school, who has reviewed and commented on X-rays from the cases. 'If the object was inserted into the vagina and it was done so in a very forceful manner, it could certainly lead to a perforation or break through the tissue and then enter your abdominal cavity, and that would probably lead to very severe illness and injury,' she says. The objects could easily remain there for years, Olson says, but would put the women at extremely high risk of 'pelvic inflammatory disease, or inflammation which can lead to things like infertility and scarring, chronic pelvic pain and fistulas.' 'For someone who's 20 or 30 years old, a lifetime of infertility, a lifetime of chronic pain, a lifetime of post-traumatic stress disorder that's untreated, it's very severe.' She emphasises, however: 'There are treatments. The treatments work. That's where there needs to be a lot of attention and energy focused.' But now, some of the few clinics that helped survivors are shuttering, as the Trump administration closes USAID-funded projects around the world. The Centre for Victims of Torture (CVT), which runs five sites in Ethiopia's Tigray region, had to cease counselling and physiotherapy sessions for women raped during the conflict after receiving a stop-work order. In Tigray's camps for internally displaced people, where a number of women speaking to the Guardian now live, the handful of mobile clinics that provide healthcare are shutting down. The UK government, which provided close to £100m in aid to Ethiopia over the course of the conflict, is now slashing its aid budget by nearly 40%. The women in Tigray are left waiting – for medical care, for psychiatric aid, for justice from the international community. Esther*, now 15, is still waiting for surgery to resolve the aftermath of her attack. She was 10 years old, out walking with her mother, Kelana*, through the rural area of Kafta, near the Eritrean border, when they were accosted by soldiers: three wearing Eritrean uniforms, and one Ethiopian. As the men raped Kelana, Esther, terrified, screamed for help. One of the men stabbed her in the stomach, grabbed a nearby cooking pot, and poured a stream of boiling water on to her midriff. The scars look like a vortex rippling across her stomach. 'Today, she goes to school, but she has no friends,' Kelana says. 'She is afraid of everything. Sometimes, on her way to school, she trembles with fear, worried that someone might attack her again. 'She dreams of becoming a doctor so she can help herself and her people. I dream of opening a small shop, a minimarket, so I can give my four children the education they deserve.' *Names have been changed to protect identity In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at Ximena Borrazas' work in Tigray received the 2024 Tom Stoddart Award for Excellence from the Ian Parry Photojournalism Grant, entries for which are now open
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Lesotho activist arrested after video on unemployment rates angers prime minister
It took a single video complaining about Lesotho's unemployment rate to turn Tšolo Thakeli into the prime minister's enemy. Within a day of posting there were armed police at his door. It was Father's Day, and the 31-year-old father of two was in his pyjamas when they arrived. He had no idea his post would land him in trouble; after all, he had campaigned for a long time, under different governments, for action on jobs for young people. But this month's video by Thakeli, asking why the premier, Sam Matekane, had not delivered on a promise to create jobs, had struck a chord with young people, who began sharing and discussing the post online. Initial attempts to charge him with insulting Matekane and inciting violence were abandoned due to lack of evidence. He was released but re-arrested the same day and charged with sedition. 'They just threw me into the holding cell. Here they are very bad: they're very small, dark, dirty, stinking and it's cold in there,' he said. He was held for two days. Thakeli was then summoned by Lesotho's head of police and told to never mention the prime minister's name again. 'The police commissioner said, 'You can talk however you want, but never mention his name again, and we cannot guarantee you any protection should you go out there again and mention his name.' He was basically saying should anything happen to me they would not do anything about it,' said Thakeli. But Thakeli has ignored the warning. He said he has no choice but to keep speaking out and has continued with social media posts and videos that attract tens of thousands of viewers. A public debate on youth joblessness was prompted recently when thousands of people turned up to an army recruitment drive seeking to fill 500 vacancies. Maketane announced he would create 70,000 jobs in just three weeks. Thakeli's video questioned the substance of this promise, highlighting that there was no provision for such job creation in a budget announced in February and asking why there had been no action in the three years since Maketane's election. Lesotho struggles with 16% unemployment, with the rate rising to 24% for young people, according to the World Bank. Thakeli, now a business owner, said he struggled to find a job after graduating as a lawyer. He has long campaigned for action on unemployment, staging a one-man protest on the issue outside parliament in 2016, long before Maketane took office. Thakeli's arrest sparked protests in Lesotho's capital, Maseru, but also concern among human rights activists in the wider southern African region over the attack on an individual expressing concern over basic social problems. 'These are questions any citizen should be asking about – for democracy, for society, they should be able to ask this. He's not asking for the PM to be removed, he's just asking the question. The response from the government is terrifying,' said Makomborero Haruzivishe, of the activist group Action for Southern Africa. On social media, Thakeli uses humour and memes, including a picture of his lawyer looking unimpressed and captioned, '[the] face he makes every time I make a live video.' But in reality he is concerned for his safety and that of his wife and daughters. Now on bail, his lawyer has heard that the authorities are considering revoking it to force him to remain in custody before a trial on 2 July. Thakeli is baffled by being suddenly seen as a security threat. 'I'm a citizen of this country: the issues of concern to the people – they affect me. I know what we go through every day. The situation keeps deteriorating and nothing is being done about it; corruption scandals fill the headlines each week,' said Thakeli. 'I'm not armed, I don't belong to any organisation, I'm just a concerned individual who wants what's best for my country and fellow citizens. I just want to hold my government accountable as that's my duty as a citizen.'
Sky News
4 hours ago
- Sky News
Brutal murder on 'date' exposes robbery gang suspected of targeting dozens of women in South Africa
Thirty-year-old Olorato Mongale made sure to take all the measures necessary for a safe first date in South Africa's biggest city, Johannesburg. She had agreed to meet 'John' in the daytime. She sent her friends her phone location after leaving her house and promptly texted them "on the road" at 2.47pm. They replied "enjoy!", hoping she would find love. An hour later, their friend had gone silent and her phone location was showing up in dangerous areas of the city. A search party of seven friends set off to trace Olorato's digital footsteps. "It didn't make sense. Where is she? Why is she missing?" says Karabo Mokoena, as we drove to the locations involved in their search. After finding her bag on a pile of bricks off the side of a main road, they filed a missing person report at a police station. "I thought there was no way we were not going to find her. We did end up finding her but not in the way we would have hoped," says Karabo. Olorato's body had been dumped at the dirt entrance of a random house less than 100m from where her friends were searching into the night. Her face was swollen and her eyes black-blue from violent impact. Her top was ripped open to expose her breasts. Police told Sky News that her post-mortem showed signs of blunt force trauma. She was likely beaten to death. "It was like I was dreaming, seeing her body like that with those bruises and blood everywhere," says Olorato's mother, Keabetswe Poppy Mongale, describing the moment she had to identify her only child at the morgue. "I don't think what I saw will ever go away," she adds. "It was very painful. I don't wish that on any parent because my beautiful little girl looked different because someone chose to do that to her." CCTV from the driveway of Olorato's building shows the last time she was seen alive, leaving her home to meet 'John'. In the video, she walks towards a white Volkswagen Polo and hesitates as she reaches the left back door. John had come with a friend. Four days after Olorato was killed, police found the car in a different province with traces of her blood splattered across the back seat. Philangenkosi Sibongokuhle Makanya - 'John' - was shot dead by police in KwaZulu-Natal shortly after they found the vehicle. The second man in the car, Bongani Mthimkhulu, is still on the run. The two men have since been identified as part of a dangerous criminal syndicate that lure young women out on dates and rob them at gunpoint. "Within the four days, the investigating officers received 94 calls from women who were raising concerns and identifying the suspects as those they once met," South African Police Service deputy national commissioner Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili told Sky News. "It was unfortunate about Olorato, but others were released after being robbed." A 24-year-old student who survived an armed robbery at the hands of Olorato's suspected killers says she was happy to see Philangenkosi killed but she's still scared for her life. "As women, we are not even safe anymore - we can't even walk freely," she says. "The moment you leave your house you wonder if you will make it back alive. I don't feel comfortable walking around the street. I leave the house and then turn back. "Even when I'm home, I still don't feel safe and always want to keep myself locked indoors," she says with a shaky voice - choosing to remain anonymous. After meeting other victims of the syndicate, she was shocked to hear details of almost identical abductions. "This other girl was surprised because we went through the exact same situation. They also approached her with the same tactic - let me take you out to lunch to get to know you - only for her to be robbed." South Africa has one of the highest femicide rates in the world - an average 15 women are killed a day, many by their intimate partners. According to police statistics, more than 5,500 women were murdered in South Africa last year. An increase of 33.8% compared with the previous year. "South Africa has six times the average rate of femicide - hundreds of women have already been killed since Olorato's murder," says Cameron Kasambala from Women for Change. The advocacy group raises awareness of rising cases of femicide and gender-based violence across South Africa. In the hours after her murder, Olorato's friends contacted Women for Change to share her missing poster after receiving little immediate help from the local police station. "I think her friends were the real heroes in that moment," says Cameron. "Two police stations that were 10 minutes apart, one finds a body and one has a missing case, don't make a connection for hours. It's not the most reassuring police work. And if the friends had not come forward, how long would it have taken? "Unfortunately, Olorato's case is an exception. Most cases are not handled that quickly." Olorato's friends are still contending with the violence of her death - what it means for their daily lives and how they navigate their safety as women in South Africa. "It is difficult to process and difficult to believe. This is somebody who ticked all the boxes when it came to being careful - being meticulous, checking her surroundings and leaving clues," says Olorato's friend, Koketso Sejosengoe. "It shows it can happen to anybody no matter how safe you are. It is happening to the average girl. They are being targeted. These men know what they are doing and who they are looking for." "In the purest sense, Olorato wanted women to be safe and wanted women to be protected," adds Koketso. "I think she would be very proud to know that her name has not gone in vain and that her death is standing for something - that there will be change that comes with this."
