Reggae Star Killed in South Africa Carjacking
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By MICHAEL WINES
Published: October 20, 2007
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.

After reading the details, this seemed more like a hit than a car jacking.