CARTOONIST Tony Grogan writes: "They say South Africans need to develop a culture of tolerance. Trouble is, we don't even have tolerance of culture."

The creator of the "apartheid is half-dead" cartoon would ordinarily be woefully out of line with his comment, what with our sanctified constitution stating instructively in its preamble, "We the people ... united in our diversity".

After all, we are the rainbow nation: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said it. We are a miracle nation, a shining example to the world, Madiba's children.

South African communities generally reflect the diversity of her peoples. Black people are running the country; policies for economic redress for blacks are in place. Even the exclusive Afrikaner enclave of Orania in the Northern Cape is tolerated.

Neat. Pretty much everything which stitches all of history, and our future, into place, the very basis of all forms of power have been sewn up in the nation-building project. Or have they?

The dream and vision that Madiba and Tutu bequeathed us will come to naught if we prematurely assume the miracle is complete - because , simply, it isn't.

Recent events conspired to jolt me back to the hard reality still dominating the experience of black South Africans.

I was not in Khayelitsha's shanty Site C, but in the tranquillity of Cape Town's northern suburbs, where my children go to racially integrated schools.

It is the first school day of 2012, and my son, 11 years old, walks through the double mahogany doors of the assembly hall in a well-organised, two-row formation.

My heart swells with pride. This is the South Africa we want to see: unity in diversity. All the colours of Tutu's rainbow are here.

I soon notice that something is amiss, seriously so. His eyes are bloodshot, and still his eyes are brimming with tears. My pumping heart sags. What has reduced the "man of the house" to this?

I discover that a contemporary of his had informed one of the parents seated next to me at the inaugural mass that a teacher had told him that he could not wear his Intambo yembeleko - a traditional "necklace" made of hairs of an animal - at the school, as it was inappropriate and against school policy.

Imbeleko is a traditional ceremony performed among Xhosa, Zulu and other cultures at birth, or later, and the imbeleko/isiphandla is worn for seven days, or until it falls off.

I had not known about this prohibition. My older child had gone through the same ritual at the same school and had worn her intambo without incident.

As my son sank in a squat on the polished wooden floor, holding his head in his hands, I shuffled next to him and whispered into his ear: "Gxarha (his clan name), what's wrong?"

As he slowly lifts his head, a single tear drops down his cheek. "The teachers say I can't wear my intambo at this school, that it is inappropriate. The way they looked at my intambo made me feel I had something abominable around my neck."

I mumble: "You must never apologise for who you are, son. This is part of who you are. I will take the matter up with the principal."

Our muffled conversation was becoming noticeable in the tranquil ceremonial atmosphere in the hall. I shuffled back to my seat, my heart still thumping, but in a different rhythm to when it was bursting with pride.

I find myself back in 1977, remembering the words of Steve Biko: "... the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step, therefore, is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused ..."

The South African flag was ushered into the august assembly alongside the school's, the flag-bearers moving slowly to the rhythm of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica: "... Let us live and strive for freedom in South Africa our land."

All this while my son's head is bowed. As I am going through emotional turbulence. I am back in 1985 - in the tumult of the struggle.

Could I not have been addressed personally on the "incompatible" intambo? Did he have to be humiliated in front of the other pupils about something so dear to him, to me?

Should I blame the all-white staff at the school for relating to our little pride in the manner that they did? What of the governing council - what do I call this intambo for them to understand what it is? What is my recourse?

When my son underwent the sacred Xhosa ritual during the holidays in the Eastern Cape, the elders had imparted to him the meaning of his intambo. He had been introduced to his ancestors. He belonged.

But, on that fateful morning at school, he was told that his source of pride was "inappropriate". It was frowned upon, and he was disdainfully told to leave it at home. "It was nothing to show off."

Culture matters beyond matters cultural. Culture makes history through the potent ideological work it does. Alongside the economy and politics, it is central to the exercise of power in that it consigns privilege and designates disadvantage.

Apartheid used culture effectively in the domination of blacks.

So, today, our schools are particularly important agencies for the development of our national consciousness and the reversal of the legacy of apartheid in the mindset which equated blackness with primitivism.

What we see, though, is the possibility of a renewed campaign for incorporation.

Max Price, vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, calls it "cultural capital". Throughout the world, he says, Western culture dominates education systems and places at a disadvantage students with different cultural capital.

How do we exorcise the sedimentary demons of apartheid and move towards Mandela's dream and Tutu's vision?

Why are black children expected to assume "acceptable identities" in the name of integration? What does this make of our "unity in diversity"?

The one-way-street conversion of blacks into "something more appropriate" in the name of integration requires that a new name should soon be found for what we are trying to achieve in our multiracial schools.

It was to the then leader of the National Party BJ Vorster that a delegate at the party congress appealed for reconsideration of the law of assault "because the [natives] have become too easily inclined to lay a charge if their employers had given them a little slap".

An assault on identity, methinks, far exceeds being a mere little slap.

Jacobs is head of the Parliamentary Communication Services, but writes here in his personal capacity