Mamphela Ramphele is co-founder of ReimagineSA and Co-President of the Club of Rome.

Where are the keepers of our constitutional democracy in the face of this gross disrespect and insensitivity to the suffering of those who have lost loved ones during the Enyobeni Tavern tragedy?

The tragic case of the deaths of 21 children at the Enyobeni Tavern, and last week's response of the Eastern Cape health department to their parents' pleas to release the postmortems and causes of death, takes many of us back to the horrors of the apartheid era cover-ups of atrocities committed against citizens by an unaccountable government.

Remember detainees slipping on pieces of soap in a shower and dying? Brain-damaged detainees "shamming brain damage, and then starving them to death"? Or murdered detainees being hung by their jeans and suicide notes being forged to cover up the brutal murders?

We are now at great risk of getting back there, if we are not already in that horror show again.

How can the Eastern Cape government believe it is appropriate to treat grieving parents of the 21 children who died in the Enyobeni Tavern in July, with such disrespect and insensitivity?

What is the Eastern Cape...