Joining the long list of women who have died at the hands of their lovers is Yoleka Xokashe from Cape Town.
Xokashe, a 23-year-old who lived with her family and child in Lower Crossroads, was found with stab wounds to her forehead last week.
It is alleged that Xokashe’s boyfriend’s knife and shoes were found with stains of blood at the crime scene.
The boyfriend has since been arrested and is expected to appear in court soon.
According to the South African Medical Research Council, every eight hours, a woman is killed by their intimate partner.
Other women killed by their partners:
Nosicelo Mtebeni: She was killed by her boyfriend Alutha Pasile in August 2021. Mtebeni, who was doing her final year of law at the University of Fort Hare, was killed in a jealous rage.
Her boyfriend packed her dismembered body parts into a suitcase and a black bag and left them on the pavement in the Eastern Cape.
Dimakatso Lebelo: She was found dead in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds at her boyfriend’s parents’ house in Limpopo.
Nosipho Mthombeni: Her severely decomposed body was found concealed in a ceiling in Balfour, Mpumalanga after she was murdered in 2022.
The crime statistics released on Friday morning show that there has been a drop in murder and sexual crimes in the three-month period between April and June.
The statistics show that the murder rate decreased by 3.1% while sexual crimes fell by 2.1% in the reporting period.
The Inanda and Umlazi police stations in KwaZulu-Natal reported most murders followed by Delft, Gugulethu and Harare police stations in Western Cape.
The statistics also indicate that almost half of reported murder cases, 2 756, were as a result of shootings while 862 people died because of stabbings.
“We’ve realised that we’ve taken the right direction, I’m sure the green shoots will be there,” said Police Minister Bheki Cele.
“Not much, but we think as we said the last time, it looks like we are turning the tide. We hope the trend will grow.”
However, a spike in attempted murder cases was noticed in the reporting period.
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