‘If I had one more chance, I would have told her to come home’

A grandmother’s voice cracked and then fell silent. It was the only sound that could carry the weight of what Velile Khumalo (76), a retired Bulawayo primary school teacher, was trying to say about her daughter and two granddaughters, murdered thousands of kilometres away in a quiet English town.

“If I had one more chance to talk to her, I would advise her to leave everything and come home,” Khumalo said in an interview with journalist Mthokozisi Ncube of B-Metro, one of the first to sit with the family since the killings. It is a sentence that a mother should never have to say about her own child – and yet it is now the sentence that defines Khumalo’s final days.

A MOTHER, A MATRIARCH, GONE

Khumalo’s daughter, Nothabo Zandile Tshuma (42), and two of her granddaughters, Natalie (15) and Nala (5), were allegedly killed by Tshuma’s husband, Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma (45), a British-Zimbabwean citizen, at the family’s home in Great Denham, Bedfordshire, in the United Kingdom, in a tragedy that has stunned both the Zimbabwean diaspora and the wider British public.

The bodies of the mother and her daughters were discovered by concerned neighbours after friends and family raised the alarm. Post-mortem examinations have since confirmed that all three died of blunt force trauma. British police allege that Tshuma boarded a flight out of London Heathrow, via Dubai, to Johannesburg on his British passport on 5 July — fleeing the country before the killings were even discovered.

What followed was an international manhunt. An Interpol Red Notice was issued, and on 10 July, Tshuma was tracked down and arrested in Kensington, Johannesburg, reportedly with assistance from his own relatives in South Africa. He was found in possession of an illegal 9mm pistol, which investigators believe he may have intended to use on himself.

He faces three counts of murder, formally authorised by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, and British authorities have opened extradition proceedings through Interpol. In South Africa, he additionally faces a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. He appeared before the Johannesburg Magistrates’ Court on 13 July, where the matter was postponed to 22 July, and remains in custody without bail while his immigration status is verified ahead of any extradition.

‘WE JUST WANT TO GRIEVE IN PEACE’

For the Khumalo family, the horror of the killings has been compounded by a second wave of cruelty: an online storm of speculation, rumour and cyber harassment that has followed the story since it broke. Nothabo’s uncle, Leon Leroy Khumalo (66), told Ncube that the family had approached police in Bulawayo for support in dealing with the fallout and appealed directly to those spreading unverified claims about the tragedy online.

“As a family, we would like to appeal to all those online people who are making up stories about the tragedy to let us grieve in peace,” Leon said. “We also appeal to journalists to stop coming here canvassing for stories, as we have nothing to say.”

Nothabo’s sister, Sibongile Gugulethu Mungoni (48), described the toll the online rumour mill has taken on a family already in mourning. “She was my mum’s handbag, and we spoke often. We are utterly devastated. Words can never express the sorrow in the family right now. We just request that people let us grieve in peace,” Mungoni said, adding that the family had withdrawn from social media altogether after encountering what she called distressing and untrue statements from anonymous accounts.

Both Leon and Sibongile made clear the family would not be drawn into speculating on the circumstances of the killings or on the conduct of anyone connected to the case, insisting that such conjecture “would not change what had happened.”

A GRANDMOTHER’S UNFULFILLED REUNION

Perhaps the cruellest detail to emerge from the interview is one of simple, ordinary longing. Velile Khumalo had last seen her granddaughters when Nala, the youngest, was still an infant. She had been counting down to December, when the family was due to travel home to Zimbabwe for a reunion that would now never happen.

Instead, Khumalo’s only remaining wish is that her daughter and grandchildren be laid to rest at Luveve Cemetery in Bulawayo — a homecoming in death that she had hoped, until recently, would come in life. “I can only accept what God has allowed to happen. My only wish now is that my daughter and grandchildren get buried here in Zimbabwe at Luveve Cemetery,” she said.

The family said funeral arrangements remain pending, dependent on when the coroner in the UK releases the bodies and on the outcome of related immigration processes.

TWO LIVES BUILT, UNDONE

The tragedy has resonated widely in part because of the stature the couple had built in the UK. Nothabo Tshuma was a respected associate director specialising in data analytics and business intelligence, with a career built around financial crime prevention and anti-money laundering work at institutions including Barclays Bank and KPMG. Colleagues have remembered her as intelligent, ambitious, and a devoted mother. Her husband had built his own career in corporate IT infrastructure and systems management.

Investigators are now examining financial records connected to Ndodana Tshuma’s company, Nexus Trove Holdings Limited, along with the family’s broader property and financial affairs, as they work to establish what, if anything, contributed to the tragedy.

A STORY THAT DEMANDS RESTRAINT

What Velile Khumalo, Leon Khumalo and Sibongile Mungoni asked for, above all else, was simple: space to grieve, free of speculation, free of cameras at the gate, free of strangers online inventing a story that is not theirs to tell. It is a request The African Mirror extends respect to, even as it reports the facts of a case that has gripped two nations.

This account draws on an original interview conducted by journalist Mthokozisi Ncube for B-Metro, with additional material sourced via Herald Online. The African Mirror extends full credit to both publications and to Ncube for the access and testimony that made this report possible.