A MAN-SIZED HOLE in the ceiling is the first thing you notice in the principal's office at Kwa Shaka Secondary School. The thieves left little, apart from the desk, a few careworn chairs and trophies for sport and music.
Bars on the windows and locks on the gates can't keep out the criminality that is endemic here. The school lies just outside Durban in Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa's second-biggest township after Soweto and home to around 1.5 million people.
A month earlier, a girl was raped at knifepoint in the school by an intruder as she sat doing her homework at 6.30am (pupils tend to come in early because there is more space than in their cramped homes). Two staff were on the premises, but out of earshot.
Another student was recently dragged into the school and gang-raped on her way back from church. Rape is rife in South Africa, and the consequences are particularly horrific because of the high incidence of Kwa Shaka's other scourge - Aids.
According to the national Medical Research Council, the disease is the prime cause of death in the country and will kill between five and seven million people by 2010.
Most new HIV infections occur in 15 to 20-year-olds; more than half of children under 15 are expected eventually to die of Aids-related diseases. Kwa Shaka itself loses an average of five of its 1,200 students a year to Aids, and three teachers have died. One current teacher is known to be HIV-positive; others may be, but have not had the test.
A recent survey found that up to 20 per cent of teachers across KwaZulu-Natal are HIV-positive. 'Every Saturday,' says Kwa Shaka's principal, Themba Bhengu, 'I have to choose from a list of 10 funerals to go to. People are dying like flies.'