Every now and again the clock stops ticking. We pause. We shake our heads in disbelief. We try to make sense of the senseless.

It happened with the rape of nine-month-old Baby Tshepang in 2001; the starvation of Deborah Phehla, one of the Life Esidimeni patients, whose post mortem revealed plastic and brown paper in her stomach; and now the assassination of Babita Deokaran, a known whistle-blower in a corrupt government department...