South African Reggae Star Slain

Lucky Dube Is Shot In Likely Carjacking Near Johannesburg

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 19 -- South African reggae star Lucky Dube was shot to death in an apparent carjacking attempt, prompting grief and anger Friday in a country whose high crime rate has claimed several famous victims in the past year.

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Dube, 43, had just dropped off his son in a Johannesburg suburb Thursday night when gunmen attacked, shooting him in front of the son and a daughter, according to news reports. He was declared dead at the scene. Police say they are searching for three suspects.

Most South Africans learned the news Friday morning through reports that dominated the front pages of newspapers. Radio shows alternated songs from Dube's more than 20 albums along with fond remembrances from fans and angry denunciations of the country's violent crime.

Dube rose to international prominence during the last years of apartheid with songs that often carried political and social themes. His later work included messages about rising violence and crime.

He is survived by a wife and seven children.

"We've lost an icon, we've lost a brother," singer Ringo Madlingozi told a Johannesburg radio station.

The attack came during a surge in national pride as South Africa's rugby team, the Springboks, prepared for the World Cup final in France on Saturday. Many people have donned green-and-yellow hats and T-shirts, or mounted flags from the backs of trucks.

But this latest in a spate of attacks on famous South Africans fouled the national mood, bringing calls for the team to wear black armbands in memory of Dube.

In the past two years, historian David Rattray, popular singer Taliep Petersen and opera singer Deon Van Der Walt were killed in attacks.

"It kind of got me thinking, what if that happens to one of us? And it so easily could," Kyla-Rose Smith, a violinist for the popular South African group Freshlyground, said from Cape Town. "No one's safe at all."

South Africa has some of the world's highest rates of violent crime, including more than 19,000 murders in the past year. Many South Africans, even in poor areas, build walls around their homes. In affluent neighborhoods, electric fences are common, as are elaborate alarm systems wired into command centers capable of deploying gun-wielding guards to homes within minutes.

President Thabo Mbeki, who has long been accused of playing down crime, responded to the killing of Dube by saying, "Even as we prepare to celebrate the victory of the Springboks we must also grieve the death of an outstanding South African and, indeed, make a commitment that we shall continue to act together as a people to confront this terrible scourge of crime, which has taken the lives of too many of our people -- and does so every day."

But Dube's own words, played on radio stations throughout South Africa, provided the most eloquent, and haunting, eulogies.

In his song, "Crime and Corruption," he sang:

Do you ever worry

About your wife becoming

The woman in black

Do you ever worry

About leaving home and

Coming back in a coffin

With a bullet through your head

Staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.