FIVE men are set to appear in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, charged with the killing of reggae star Lucky Dube, police said Sunday.

Dube – driving a Chrysler sedan -- was shot three times on Thursday after dropping his two teenage children, Nonkululeko and Thokozani, at his brother’s house in the Rosettenville area of Johannesburg.

Friends and relatives said they believed the attack was an assassination, but police discounted that theory following the arrest of the five suspects on Sunday morning. Police say Dube was murdered in a botched hijack.

Dube’s murder sparked an international outcry, and highlighted South Africa’s growing gun culture.

Police spokesperson Eugene Opperman said two stolen handguns and four cars -- including one allegedly used as a getaway after Dube’s slaying -- had been seized by detectives.

"I can confirm that five suspects were arrested this morning," Superintendent Opperman said Sunday.

"We also confiscated two unlicensed firearms, and four cars including the blue VW Polo that is believed to have been used on the night the crime was committed. The cars are believed to have been stolen," he added.

Dube, who was 43, is survived by wife, Zanele, and seven children -- Bongi, Nonkululeko, Thokozani, Laura, Siyanda, Philani and three-month-old Melokuhle. He recorded over 20 albums in a career spanning over two decades, and won a hatful of local and international awards.

His murder sent shockwaves across South Africa and sparked an intense political battle, with opposition parties saying his death demonstrated the government’s failure to get to grips with gun crime.

Dube’s family and friends said the circumstances surrounding his murder pointed to a hit, and not a hijacking as police had suggested.

“If you hijack a peaceful someone like Lucky Dube, you don’t pump three bullets into his body. You simply scare him off and take the car,” said poet and activist Mzwakhe Mbuli, who arrived at the scene shortly after Dube’s murder.

“No cellphone, money or any other item was taken. No car was taken. So how do you come to that conclusion and tell the masses it is a hijacking?” asked Mbuli. ‘‘He was murdered in cold blood. They can call it a hijacking but I maintain it was a premeditated murder.”

Mbuli told a Sunday newspaper that his suspicions were corroborated by an account of a neighbour who saw a VW Polo which had been in the street, driving up and down slowly on three occasions.

He said Dube was gunned down when the car returned for the third time. But police spokesman Opperman said detectives believed Dube’s murder was the result of a botched hijack.

South African citizens fall prey to around 13 000 hijackings per year, the highest per capita rate in the world by some distance. You are more than ten times more likely to be hijacked outside your house than at your place of business, according to a recently published survey by the national real estate network RE/MAX.

Eerily, Dube addressed the fear of being killed by hijackers in the lyrics of his 2001 song Crime and Corruption: "Do you ever worry about your house being broken into? Do you ever worry about your car being taken away from you … Do you ever worry about leaving home and coming back in a coffin, with a bullet through your head? So join us and fight this."

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