A BOY, A SWORD, THEN CARNAGE
IT’S 7am on Monday 18 August 2008. Cars trundle up Schoeman Drive in Krugersdorp, briefly stopping as parents deliver their children to the gates of Nic Diederichs Technical High School.
As the new week begins, students gather in groups around the school-grounds – there’s the weekend to be dissected, the arrival of Monday to bemoan, and for the Grade 12 scholars, the buzz of impending freedom is almost palpable.
Nobody pays much attention when Morné Harmse walks in with a large red tog bag casually slung over his shoulder. The contents of that bag are the culmination of close to a year’s worth of wild fantasies and careful planning. While Morné has elements of “the plan” in his bag, he’s counting on four other boys to have brought the remaining pieces.
As he arrives, he spots his collaborators and heads over to them. After greeting the boys, Morné (18) asks David* about his contribution to the plan. David pulls a wooden box out of his school bag, glances around and lifts the lid so that his friend can see the contents.
Inside is a cobbled-together assortment of springs, batteries, pieces of plastic piping and wire, all encased in yellow insulation tape. This is the “bomb” he’s spent the weekend building.
Hours later, though, David will tell police that, in his mind, it was all an elaborate joke. He’d never intended to build a device that would actually explode.
In any case, he will say, he’d had no idea how to make a bomb, even if he’d wanted
