JOHANNESBURG: Concerns were raised on Tuesday about violence in South Africa’s schools after a quiet high-school pupil donned a macabre ninja-like outfit before slaying a fellow student with a sword.

His face painted black, wearing a home-made mask and wielding a sword resembling a samurai, the teenager on Monday went on a violent spree killing a 16-year old boy and injuring two school gardeners.

Police spokesman Captain Jacob Raboroko said the killing took place early on Monday before the Nic Diederichs Technical High School in Krugersdorp on the western outskirts of Johannesburg held its daily assembly.

Experts agree the latest tragedy is one of many showing an increase in violent incidents in the country’s schools.

“It is horrifying. The incident further shows that violence in South African schools is a real problem and people, especially parents, are worried about it,” the director of South Africa’s Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention (CJCP), Eric Pelser said.

Education expert Graeme Bloch of the Development Bank of South Africa said it showed South Africans were living in a “very violent society”. “It is an extreme situation, also underlying the general problems facing our youth: problems of identity, confidence in the future, abuse of drugs and breakdown of family’s moral system.”

A recent study by the CJCP, released in April, said violence in the country’s schools was “embedded in the broader violent South African environment”. Official statistics indicate that at least 50 murders are committed in South Africa every day, while child murders increased 22.4 per cent between March 2007 and April 2008.

The CJCP research, carried out between 2006 and 2007 in conjunction with the department of education, showed that 15.3 per cent of students in primary and secondary schools, or 1.8 million pupils, had been victims at some point of violence such as assault, sexual harrassment or assault, rape or robberies.More than 88,000 pupils in high-schools across the Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, had experienced violence in schools, adds the report titled “Merchants, Skollies and Stones”, the first such study in the country.

According to the study, children engaged in violence due to drug or alcohol use, exposure to violence, easy access to weapons and criminal role models, including parents and environment.

In schools, up to 64 per cent of pupils had easy access to alcohol, 25.3 per cent drugs and 62 per cent to guns, the report said.

The head of Gauteng education, Angie Motshekga, who is also the leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) women’s league, said Tuesday she was “taken aback” at the killing of the Grade Nine pupil.

“This is traumatic. Parents leave their children with us in schools and expect to find them in one piece,” she told teachers and pupils during a visit to the school, according to SAPA news agency.—AFP