It is no wonder that the few who rise above their class cannot live with the shame of having distinguished themselves. They can neither be who they are nor stay where they are: many will marry outside their social circle; most will leave the neighbourhood for good. That is how class society operates: “In turning people against each other, the class system of authority and judgement-making goes itself into hiding; the system is left unchallenged as people enthralled by the enigmas of its power battle one another for respect.”

In an unequal society that professes equality for all, shame rears its head at every turn; for the poor and working classes in particular substance use becomes a ready consolation. Indeed, South Africa - with the second highest Gini coefficient for income inequality - also has one of the highest alcohol consumptions in the world.

Perpetrators are so engulfed by their shame, “including over matters that are so trivial, that their very triviality makes it even more shameful to feel ashamed about them”. Shame envelopes shame: what appears to be ‘unprovoked’ violence is anything but that - and, as Gilligan reminds us, “[a] man only kills another when he is, as he sees it, fighting to save himself, his own self - when he feels he is in danger of experiencing… the ‘death of the self’”.

The thing is, poverty in its absolute sense does not generate shame - it is relative poverty that does the damage. It is not for nothing, therefore, that South Africa - one of the most unequal societies in the world - is known also for being the protest capital of the world.

It is of critical importance to recognise that for people who regard themselves as having no recourse to better their lives, the exercise of violence proves an intoxicating surrogate. Shame - despite its origins in the self - is an excruciatingly public emotion. To feel it is to feel oneself a reprobate. Overcompensation through personal achievement is not an option. When a person feels judged - hounded - by the jury that is public opinion, the only way to exorcise that feeling is to eliminate the jury altogether. In the mind of the perpetrator, transferring one’s own suffering onto another human being becomes a viable - almost noble - moral calculus, turning the master-slave dialectic on its head.

This individualisation of trauma is typical of medical model thinking, but its unfortunate consequence is that our society is disinclined to regard the victims of structural violence as being the victims of trauma. Accordingly, the empathy we ordinarily show survivors of (individual) traumas is withheld from those who are victims of social trauma. It is no wonder, then, that we think nothing of confining offenders with the most traumatic social histories to the most traumatising places on earth.