Zimbabwean mother and her two young daughters buried in Bulawayo, weeks after being found dead in England

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WORLD · AFRICA

Thousands attended the funeral for Nothabo Tshuma and her daughters, Natalie, 15, and Nala, 5. Her husband, the girls’ father, remains in custody in South Africa as UK prosecutors seek his extradition on three counts of murder.

LUANDA  — About 2,000 mourners packed a cemetery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, on Tuesday to bury a mother and her two young daughters who were found dead in their family home in England last month, in a killing that has drawn in three countries and left their relatives waiting for a justice process still in its early stages.

Nothabo Zandile Tshuma, 42, and her daughters, Natalie, 15, and Nala, 5, were laid to rest side by side in white caskets at Old Luveve Cemetery, a month after they were found dead at their home in Great Denham, Bedfordshire, in England.

“The thought of burying a child is bad enough, but the thought of burying grandchildren is beyond my comprehension, and I am sure that we all felt that today,” Bulawayo Mayor David Coltart told mourners at the service.

What happened

British police found the bodies of Tshuma and her daughters on July 6, after relatives said they were unable to reach the family. A post-mortem examination determined that all three died of blunt force trauma, UK authorities said.

Officers have authorized three counts of murder against Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, Nothabo’s husband and the girls’ father, who was born in Zimbabwe and holds British citizenship. He fled the UK in the days after the killings and was arrested in Johannesburg, South Africa, on July 10.

He remains in South African custody, where he is also facing a separate illegal firearm possession charge, while authorities there consider a UK extradition request. No formal extradition treaty exists between the UK and South Africa; requests between the two countries are instead handled under the London Scheme for Extradition within the Commonwealth, a process that can take months or longer to resolve, particularly if contested.

A tense farewell

The funeral brought together relatives from both sides of the family, the Khumalos, Nothabo’s relatives, and the Tshumas, her husband’s family, in what several attendees described as a tense atmosphere.

Speaking on behalf of the Khumalo family, Theophilus Khumalo said they were choosing to respond to the tragedy with restraint rather than anger.

“We stand firm in our commitment to the truth, to justice, and dignity,” he said. “We will allow the law to take its course, we will not be drawn into anger or bitterness. We will not allow this tragedy to define us, instead we choose to honour their memory with grace, unity and unwavering faith in God’s justice and God’s comfort.”

Mourners sang hymns as the three coffins were lowered into the ground.

The bodies had been due to arrive in Zimbabwe on Sunday but were delayed two days by bad weather in Addis Ababa, where the repatriation flight made a stop. They landed in Harare on Monday before being taken to the family’s home in the Gwabalanda suburb of Bulawayo, and then to the cemetery for Tuesday’s burial.

The bigger picture

The case has drawn attention in both the UK and Zimbabwe, in part because of what it says about families split across borders by migration. The UK is now the largest single source of remittances to Zimbabwe, according to central bank data, having overtaken South Africa as diaspora Zimbabweans, officially numbering more than 130,000 UK residents, though community estimates that include UK-born descendants run far higher, send billions of dollars home each year.

Domestic homicide remains a persistent problem in England and Wales, where 111 people were killed in domestic homicides in the year to March 2025, 75 of them women, according to official figures compiled by the Femicide Census and UK domestic homicide reports. Sixty-seven of those victims were killed by a partner or ex-partner.

UK and South African authorities said legal proceedings, including the extradition request, are ongoing. AfricaHeadline has reached out to police in both countries for further comment on the status of the case.