Nadeolin Lucas,15, was waiting for a serving of his favourite meal, samp and beans, on Tuesday June 13 when he was stabbed in the neck.
Friends who were with him on the day told his family that Nadeolin had been stabbed from behind while queueing for his feeding-scheme meal at Scottsdene High School.
According to police, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for murder and released into the care of his parents. The Lucas family, who live in Wallacedene, say this is not the first time the boy had stabbed their son.
Nadeolin had come home bleeding a week before after the same boy had waited for him outside the school gate and stabbed him in the arm.
“Hy’t gesê: ‘O, jy’s mos ’* slim een’,” Nadeolin’s father, Deon, said. “En toe steek hy hom in die arm.”
They had not reported the first attack to police, Mr Lucas said. Rumours in the community and on social media said Nadeolin and the alleged killer were part of rival gangs.
On Wednesday a post circulating on Facebook mentions both boys by name and published what it claimed to be their addresses, but the Northern News can confirm that the addresses were wrong. And Nadeolin’s family insist he was not a gangster.
“Hulle was ’* groepie,” said Nadeolin’s aunt, Theresa Cupido.
“Hulle het saam ball gespeel. Dis nie ’* gang nie. Gangsters loop met gunne en verkoop drugs.”
Nadeolin was the second eldest of five children.
“Hy het baie mooi maniere,” Mr Lucas said, adding that Nadeolin had not been the type to hold grudges.
Mr Lucas hopes parents, supported by the schools, will come together to find solutions to the violence.
“Baie kinders wil nie meer skool toe gaan nie, want hulle is bang,” he said. “Ek het vir hom gese: ‘Moenie bang wees nie, seun, wees op jou hoede.”
Mawethu Sila, the Kraaifontein Community Police Forum (CPF) chairman, said they were working hard to build relationships with schools to prevent the “killing of the future of these children”.
He said the CPF wanted to stop young people from being lured by gangsterism.
“To them, it seems normal to join gangs,” he said.
“We want to know what is attracting them to that, and then the CPF would like to come up with programmes that will keep them away from these things.”
Western Cape Education Department spokeswoman Millicent Merton said drug testing, search and seizures, conflict management and peer mediation were some of the things the Safe Schools service did to prevent pupils coming to harm.
Asked how a pupil had allegedly managed to take a knife to school, Ms Merton said: “A police investigation is under way.”