Abstract
This paper explores violence in intimate relationships in one low-income community in
the Western Cape, South Africa. In this community most intimate relationships (including parentchild, intimate partner relationships and friendships) seem to be characterized by anger, rage and
also violence. In our analysis we discuss how the concepts of shame, guilt and the compulsion to repeat
can serve to illuminate the seemingly inevitable link between violence and care in this specific
community. It also seems that contextual factors such as class, gender and race shape not only the
form violence assumes, but also to whom it is directed. While we pay attention to the material and
ideological conditions that shape the lives of individual storytellers, we also focus on the ways in which
violence is represented in the individual stories.