19 October 2007
Posted to the web 19 October 2007
Faatimah Hendricks
Cape Town
South African reggae superstar, Lucky Dube, was shot dead in an attempted hijacking in the southern suburbs of Johannesburg on Thursday night.
Dube was dropping his two teenage children off at at his brother's house when he was attacked by a gang of armed men, a local radio station reported.
Dube's son was out of the car when the gunmen approached and shot Dube. The boy called for help but his father died at the scene. His son was too traumatised to provide the police with any information.
Police spokesperson Eugene Opperman told Reuters news agency: “They (the hijackers) allegedly tried to take his vehicle, but then shots were fired and he was fatally wounded.”
The children were unhurt, and the gunmen fled the scene. No arrests have been made.
Dube started his musical career by singing traditional Zulu music and later moved on to reggae. His first album, “Rastas Never Die”, released in 1984, was banned by the apartheid government.
Dube's last album, "Respect," was released in April this year. He recorded over 20 albums and won more than 20 local and international awards over the course of his career.
Afropop Worldwide |
South African Reggae musician was killed during a hijacking near his home in Johannesburg. His son, who was with him, managed to escape and call for help.
Reggae Star Killed in South Africa Carjacking
JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 19 — A team of gunmen shot and killed Lucky Dube, an international reggae star and one of the nation’s best-known musicians, apparently in a carjacking attempt late Thursday that underscored the continuing peril of violent crime here.
As the provincial police commissioner appointed seven veteran investigators to chase down the attackers, President Thabo Mbeki called on the nation “to confront this terrible scourge of crime, which has taken the lives of too many of our people, and does so every day.”
The police said Mr. Dube, 43, was shot by three assailants in Rosettenville, just south of downtown Johannesburg, as he dropped off his 15-year-old son at his brother’s house. Mr. Dube’s son was in the car at the time, they said.
The attackers fled after Mr. Dube crashed his Chrysler into a tree. He died at the scene.
The principal opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said, “The circumstances surrounding his murder again illustrate that violent crime in South Africa is out of control, and that the government’s remedies to address this scourge have failed.”
South Africa has reduced the homicide rate by 41 percent since becoming a democracy in 1994, experts say, but the pace of killings and other violent crimes remains among the world’s highest, and attacks both on ordinary citizens and on high-profile figures, including politicians and the police, are a daily occurrence.
The government has committed to reduce so-called contact crimes, in which criminals confront victims, by 7 percent annually. Figures for the last annual reporting period, which ended in March, showed declines in attempted murders, assaults, rape and several other categories.
But homicides rose to 19,200, a 3.5 percent increase, reversing a long drift downward. Aggravated robberies, in which criminals assault and rob victims, leaped by nearly 6 percent, to more than 126,000. And carjackings rose 6 percent, to a level not seen in four years.
Those increases reflect a disturbing shift toward violence by certain kinds of criminals, said Dr. Johan Burger, a 36-year veteran of the South African Police Service who is an analyst for the Institute for Security Studies, based in Pretoria.
“This is a change for the worse,” he said. “A psychosis of fear is spreading, and this has dangerous, dangerous implications if it is not stopped. I’m not at all convinced that we’re doing the right thing at the moment.”
While both politicians and the news media were demanding more police officers to combat the rise in violent crime, he said, South Africa already exceeds international norms for the number of police officers needed for its population. To reduce the violence, he said, the nation needs to control illegal immigration, especially from war zones, which has increased the population of destitute immigrants with military training and experience with violence.
He also said the nation needed to reduce the vast gap between the wealthy and a jobless underclass that has little hope of climbing out of poverty except by crime.
On Friday, Mr. Dube’s Web site, luckydubemusic.com, said his death “leaves a great void in the music industry as 25 years of music suddenly ends in tragedy.”
Mr. Dube began as a singer of traditional African songs but swept to international stardom in the 1980s when he began singing reggae. He recorded 22 albums during his career and worked with Peter Gabriel, Seal and other Western singers, but he spent most of his time in Africa, where his base of fans was strongest.
He is survived by a wife and seven children.
No comments:
Post a Comment