The deaths of a Bulawayo mother and her daughters spark calls for an urgent action on gender-based violence
The three white coffins were draped in white lace and topped with small sprays of flowers. The mourners who filled a Bulawayo church last week to pay their respects to Zandile Tshuma and her daughters, Natalie, 15, and Nala, five, had not engaged in the usual tradition of first viewing the dead at their home: the bodies of this family had travelled all the way from England to reach their final resting place at Luveve cemetery on the edge of Zimbabwe’s second city, in Matabeleland.
While the deaths attracted few news reports in the UK, in Zimbabwe and South Africa, the tragic case has reignited concern over the region’s high rates of femicide. Many commentators on TV and social media expressed shock that a well-educated woman with a successful career abroad seemed as vulnerable to familial violence as a poorer woman in a southern African township.
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