Court officials on Tuesday laid various swords and masks on a table just before the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg started sentencing a Krugersdorp teenager convicted of hacking another to death.
The masks appeared crudely homemade, with one featuring a clown face, while another had thick rope resembling sparse hair strands twirling out of an orange, crumpled paper face.
Another had an elongated nose made out of a tin can.
Four swords of various lengths were also laid out on a table in the court room.
Morne Harmse, convicted of the killing, and also of wounding three others during his attack last August at Nic Diederichs Technical High School in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, entered the dock wearing a white jersey over a striped shirt.
He put his arm up towards his father as his father bent over to hug him.
A cluster of family and friends of the victim, 16-year-old Jacques Pretorius, were present in the court room.
The group included Pretorius’s mother, Adel, who on Monday had wept and shaken uncontrollably while giving testimony about the impact of her son’s death on her family. — Sapa