When Julius Malema spoke in parliament on Tuesday referring to the attack on the EFF by security police

he referred to them pulling the EFF MPs by their private parts. Some MPs laughed. Now some of these MPs must surely have been in the hands of the apartheid police where those sadistic torturers also laughed while treating them in a dehumanised manner focusing very often on the genitals. That MPs laughed is a telling example of how the same people who were liberators have in many cases become similar in their patterns of conduct and their consciousness, in their reactions to the infliction of dehumanisation on others. It is true that all who have been imprisoned and/or tortured suffer post traumatic stress and the laughter may connote many things. But we need to say ‘no’ to this conduct. At the very least it indicates a level of callousness that is manifested a sense of compassion that is being lost. For our healing as people who may have been tortured and as a nation which has been wounded we need to recover the passion and compassion that drove many to make sacrifices for our freedom.