Four men who police believe may be responsible for the murder of jazz musician Gito Baloi were arrested in Hillbrow on Friday.
Inspector Amanda Roestoff said the Johannesburg Serious and Violent Crime Unit took four men in for questioning following a tip-off from a member of the public.
Three firearms, two unlicenced and one licenced, were confiscated.
Baloi, celebrated South African bassist, and one-time member of the group Tananas, was shot and killed on the streets of Johannesburg in the early hours of April 4.
Baloi had been driving from a gig in Pretoria to his home in Kensington when the incident occurred. Only Baloi’s wallet was stolen.
Roestoff said investigations were continuing.
Baloi was one of the country’s most respected musicians, having started out on make-shift instruments in his home country Mozambique.
Baloi learnt to play on discarded paraffin tins and reeds and played his first public performance with a borrowed bass guitar, according to his website.
He used the proceeds of these shows to support his family in war-torn Mozambique and after extensive travels through the country, came to South Africa.
Besides a seven-album career with Steve Newman and Ian Herman as Tananas, he played with top musicians like Kenya’s Simba Morri, Sting and Tracy Chapman.
Baloi also accompanied liberation poet Mzwakhe Mbuli on two of his albums when he changed from giving apartheid police the slip at comrades’ funerals to accompanied performances.
Since splitting from the group Tananas in 1994, Baloi has released several solo albums, and has started his own band: The Gito Baloi Band, according to his website.
His last gig, before the shooting, was a duo with Landscape Prayers’ Nibs van der Spuy at Pretoria’s Lucit Candle-Gardens.
Brad Holmes, owner of the now closed Bassline club in Melville, where Baloi played regularly with the Tananas or with other musicians, described Baloi as ”the most gentle individual I have ever known in my life and he was a very good musician. We are all traumatised.” – Sapa