A heavily pregnant woman has been found hanging from a tree.

Tshegofatso Pule, 28, went missing last week after having an argument with her boyfriend at his apartment.

Pule’s family said she never returned home and after days of searching, someone discovered her body hanging from a tree near Johannesburg, a city in South Africa.

Police officers have launched a murder investigation, saying the 28-year-old, who was eight months pregnant, had been stabbed in the chest.

A family member told The Sowetan that Pule went to see her boyfriend. But after getting into an argument with the guy, she told her family that she was getting an Uber cab.

The CCTV footage shows Pule getting into the Uber cab before disappearing but she never arrived home. She stopped answering her phone and her boyfriend refused to pick up his phone.

After two days, the worried family launched an appeal to find Pule and put up missing posters in their area.

A member of the public found the stabbed body hanging from a tree and contacted Pule’s family immediately.

Pule’s death has sparked outrage online, with the hashtag #justicefortshego trending on Twitter in South Africa.

Her uncle, Tumisang Katake, said: “I don’t want to get into details how horrific the scene was. It hurts as a family, we don’t want to relive those moments. We want to put those things behind us. We are satisfied with the investigations and have been briefed by the police.

“Any question that has to do how we feel how she was found I am not going to answer that. Any question whether we suspect that her boyfriend is behind the murder, I am not going to answer that as we are not involved in the investigations.”

South Africa’s minister for women Maite Nkoana-Mashabane called the incident a ‘shame’ on society. “We should never allow gender-based violence to become a norm in our communities,” she expressed.

“How many more women, young girls and children must live with this constant fear of being attacked and violated?

“Women should not have to protect themselves from men. They have the right to feel safe.”

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