Lucky Dube’s killers have, at last, been convicted and sentenced for their awful deed. And despite all the other shenanigans in the South Africa legal world at the moment, this seems to be justice done in a reasonable time. It is apparent that the justice system is not all bad, contrary to what a lot of South Africans seem to believe and vocalise.

This is a man that had so much to offer the world. And the issue is not that someone wanted to steal his car, but that they were prepared to go to the point of taking another person’s life to get the car. It is the callousness and violence of the crimes, and not always the crime itself, that is so shocking in South Africa.

Prisoner
Somebody told me about it
When I was still a little boy
He said to me, crime does not pay
He said to me, education is the key, yeah
As a little boy I thought I knew
What I was doing, yeah man
But today here I am in jail

There is bitter irony in those words from one his most famous songs. The guys that shot him will be singing it for the remainder of their natural lives behind prison gates. The Prisoner album was released in 1991 and the song is more relevant today than it was when it was written nearly twenty years ago.

Take a look at 1964-2007 Remembered forever which is a tribute by his label, with a link through to his website.

Tags: crime, justice, lucky dube, music

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.