A 20-YEAR-OLD matric pupil was stabbed to death and three others hospitalised after a fight with pupils from other schools in Qhorha village outside Dutywa in Eastern Cape.

Police spokesperson Captain Jackson Manatha said yesterday that the murdered pupil had just written an examination paper at Gwadana Senior Secondary School when he was killed in a fight on Tuesday afternoon.

He said the boy, his schoolmates and boys from other schools and non-pupils had gate-crashed a farewell function at Gqukesi Junior Secondary School when the fight started.

"The cause of the quarrel is not known, but teachers were forced to throw the fighting boys out of the school premises," Manatha said.

Once outside the school premises the schoolboys from Gqukesi and other pupils are alleged to have "attacked the Gwadana schoolboys" in a general brawl.

"During the course of the attack 20-year-old Siyamcela Gadlela of Gwadana Senior Secondary School was stabbed to death," he said.

Three other boys from Gadlela's school were also stabbed and were taken to Butterworth Hospital in critical conditions.

No one has been arrested and police are investigating a case of murder and three of attempted murder.

l Nic Diederichs Technical High School pupil Morné Harmse, 19, was recently sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for slashing Jacques Pretorius, 16, with a sword on August 18 last year.

Another pupil and two gardeners at the school were injured.

l In September 2007, Mfundo Ntshangase, a Grade 11 pupil at King Edward VII High School, was stabbed seven times at a party in Randburg, Johannesburg.

l On October 17, a pupil at Seshigo High School, Moletjie village, Limpopo, was stabbed to death at school after getting into a fight with two pupils from another school.

l In August 2008, a 17-year-old schoolboy was stabbed to death by a fellow pupil after a quarrel at Senzangakhona High School at KwaMhlanga in Mpumalanga.