Three days after six decomposed bodies were found in downtown Joburg, women were back at work, driven by the need to put food on the table despite fears for their safety on the streets.

"We were forever laughing but all she wanted was a better life for her family," recalled Nokuthula Ndlovu, a friend of the woman whose decomposed body was found in the back of a van in the city CBD this week.

Five other decomposed bodies, with hands and feet bound, were found on Sunday 9 October in an unused section of a business premises on Stevenson Street, near the Faraday taxi rank.

The woman in the van, whose body has not yet been identified by her family, was reported missing two weeks ago by friends when she did not return to her flat. She was last seen on Anderson Street with a young man who often paid for sex, Ndlovu said.

All the women are believed to have been sex workers, most of them foreign nationals. The murders have put the precarious and often dangerous lives of sex workers in the spotlight.

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