“Six people have been arrested and they will appear in court on Thursday. There’s one outstanding,” a visibly pleased police minister Bheki Cele announced on Tuesday evening.

It was a moment that many South Africans and fans of megastar Kiernan “AKA” Forbes have been waiting for since he and his friend Tebello “Tibz ” Motsoane were killed in Durban in February last year.

A seventh suspect was arrested on Wednesday. Five of the men were expected to appear in court on Wednesday to answer to double murder charges while the process is ongoing to extradite their alleged two accomplices from eSwatini, where they were found in hiding.

A timeline of arrests and discovery of evidence, which dates back to March last year, has shown that as police faced months of public pressure to crack the case, investigators were hard at work piecing together crucial evidence which, hopefully, will stand up to legal scrutiny.

By arresting the suspects for parallel crimes, keeping them in custody while gathering evidence to build the Forbes case, the police’s strategy appears to have followed the evidence, rather than the allure of immediate public praise on a questionable case.

For their work so far, they must be commended. Evidence suggests the suspects planned and coordinated the hit, whose main target was AKA. We don’t know why. But if police evidence stands up to scrutiny, the Forbes family and the nation at large will, hopefully, get closer to discovering who wanted the musician dead and for what reason.

Many have expressed skepticism that the arrest of the men may not necessarily lead to uncovering the mastermind behind the hit. This is a reasonable apprehension considering many cases where alleged triggermen are brought to justice while those who order their ghastly deeds remain elusive and free.

This lack of accountability is precisely why SA has become notorious across the world for murders for hire – a phenomenon that seems easier to execute than it is to prosecute.

For the sake of the Forbes family and the cause of justice, we hope every one of those involved in this crime, regardless of who they are, will face the harshest consequence provided for by the law.