This piece reflects on the wider crisis of coercive control following the deaths of Nothabo Zandile Tshuma and her daughters, Natalie, 15, and Nala, five, in Bedfordshire. As criminal proceedings in that case are now active, this article does not comment on its specific circumstances.
Another woman is dead. Another two children are dead. And within days, the same tired refrain will surface: how could this happen, why didn’t anyone see it, why didn’t she leave. I am done accepting these as innocent questions. They are evasions, and every time we ask them instead of the harder ones, we let institutions, communities and men who should have intervened off the hook.
In 2023, after twelve months of marriage to a Zimbabwean man, I left. To everyone around us, ours looked like an unremarkable marriage. What they did not see was the coercive control, the manipulation, the intimidation, the low hum of fear that had become the texture of my daily life. I did not leave because I stopped loving him. I left because I finally understood that love does not require the forfeiture of safety, and no woman should be made to believe otherwise.
The deaths of Zandile Tshuma and her two young daughters are not an aberration. They are what happens when a pattern that is entirely recognisable, and entirely preventable, is left unchallenged. As a survivor, I do not read this story with detachment. I read it and think: that could have been me. That thought should not belong to survivors alone. It should sit with every police officer, every pastor, every family elder, every friend who noticed something and said nothing.
Abuse does not begin with a blow. It begins with control, and it is time we stopped treating that distinction as a technicality. In my case it began with relentless interrogation about where I was and who I was with, lies that eroded trust by degrees, financial manipulation disguised as borrowing, quiet incursions into decisions that were mine alone to make. I lived in a state of permanent vigilance, convinced that if I loved harder or communicated better, it would stop. It did not stop. It does not stop. Coercive control is not a prelude to abuse. It is the abuse, and it must be prosecuted, policed and named as such, consistently and without exception.
Much of this violence exists entirely beyond public view, and that is not an accident. Many perpetrators cultivate respectability deliberately, because respectability buys them doubt. The man admired at church, trusted at work, photographed smiling with his children, can be an entirely different man behind a closed door. Communities that extend automatic credibility to reputation over the testimony of victims are not neutral bystanders. They are complicit, and they need to hear that plainly.
I stayed for a long time, and I want to be direct about why, because the question of why women stay has been asked cynically for too long. I stayed because I loved him, because I believed the marriage could be saved, because shame is an effective jailer. I am not interested in relitigating that decision. I am interested in redirecting the question entirely. Stop asking why she stayed. Start asking why the warning signs were ignored, why she was expected to produce proof before anyone intervened, and why the man causing harm was so consistently given the benefit of the doubt that should have gone to her.
This is not an indictment of Zimbabwe or of Zimbabwean men specifically. Gender-based violence respects no border. But universality is not an excuse for inaction within any one community, and every community, including this one, must stop hiding behind that universality as a reason to look away.
To the majority of men who are not abusive: your silence is no longer acceptable. Challenge controlling behaviour when you see it in a friend, a brother, a colleague. Believe women the first time they speak, not after the funeral. Refuse to make excuses on another man’s behalf. This is not a women’s issue you are permitted to opt out of. It is a leadership failure among men, and it will not be solved by men who consider themselves exempt because they, personally, would never.
To churches, elders, extended families and community leaders: when abuse is disclosed to you, your first obligation is to the safety of the person in front of you, not to the reputation of the man accused. Protecting reputations over victims is not neutrality. It is a decision, and it has a body count.
To policymakers, in the UK, in Zimbabwe, and across the region: the tools to prevent this exist and are not being used with sufficient urgency. Fund specialist domestic abuse services properly, not symbolically. Train police forces to recognise coercive control as a distinct and prosecutable pattern, not merely a precursor to something worse. Put education on healthy relationships into schools now, not after the next tragedy. Resource evidence-based perpetrator programmes and hold them to measurable accountability. These are not radical demands. They are the minimum.
I was fortunate enough to leave. Not every woman is given that chance, and the gap between those two outcomes is not fate. It is the sum of every warning sign ignored, every institution that moved too slowly, every bystander who decided it wasn’t their business. Gender-based violence is preventable. That word, preventable, should be an indictment, not a comfort. If this article changes nothing beyond how one reader responds the next time they see the warning signs I have described, then say something. Report something. Refuse to look away. That is the minimum any of us owes the women who did not get to leave.
Victoria Walker is a survivor of domestic abuse and an advocate for greater public understanding of coercive control. She writes here about leaving an abusive marriage and the silence that often surrounds gender-based violence within diaspora communities.
Disclaimer
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Southern African Times. This piece does not comment on the specific circumstances of the Tshuma case, which remains before the courts.
Support
UK: National Domestic Abuse Helpline (Refuge), freephone 24/7 — 0808 2000 247
Zimbabwe: Musasa Project GBV helpline — 116, or Econet 08080074 / NetOne 08010074 / Telecel 0731080074
