Officials of South Africa's Education Department are now embroiled in a nasty controversy after it included in a list of exam questions a scenario on baby rape.

On Monday, thousands of high school students aged around 17 took the South African nationwide exam. They were unprepared when a question popped up asking them how they would stage a scene about the rape of a baby.

Citing the award-winning play 'Tshepang' by Lara Foot Newton as inspiration for the question, high school students were asked to describe, using a broom and a loaf of bread as symbols, how a rapist would stage the assault on a nine-month old baby.

As expected, South Africa's Education Department defended the question's inclusion in the nationwide exams.

"Nowhere is it expected of the candidate to have to literally describe the actual act of raping a nine-month-old baby," it said in a statement. The question meant to assess the student's ability of using metaphor as a theatrical technique.

"Everyone was in shock that we were asked such a question. It was so gruesome and we were not sure how to answer it," South Africa' Times newspaper quotes a Durban pupil as saying.

The very author of the play Ms Newton herself was beyond words when she learned of the exam entry.

"It's inappropriate for a drama student to have to answer that kind of question at that (grade) level," she told BBC.

Although students managed to overcome their shock and were able to at least provide sufficient answers, they remained mum when asked how their replied to the particular sensitive question.

"When I read the question I was in shock," Caitlin Wiggil, an 18-year-old student in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, said.

"To describe the rape of a nine-month-old baby is something you never want to have to do. To be forced to do it because you need the marks is completely disgusting," she told Reuters.

"While drama is all encompassing, we never expected such a question or topic. This is sickening to say the least," one pupil told the local Witness newspaper.

"How does a 17-year-old describe the rape of a baby? We have been forced to imagine the unimaginable."

Government data revealed at least 65,000 sexual offences have been committed in South Africa in 2012 alone. To say that some of the students may have been victims is adding more insult to injury.

Michelle Smith, a rape trauma counsellor, wholly agreed it was "incredibly insensitive" for the educational system to submit the students to such a line of questioning.

"You cannot put something like this in an exam paper and call it raising awareness," the Witness quoted her as saying.