I don't really care about national anthems. I've never understood the point of them. They take up time before the game, they're the least interesting part of the Olympics and I am constitutionally inclined to resent anything that tries to make me stand up after I've sat down.More than that: I dislike what national anthems represent. People who like national anthems tend to be big on nationalism, and nationalism is distasteful to me. Nationalists argue that it's about pride and belonging, but generally pride and belonging are built on principles of denigration and exclusion. You have pride in being you if you convince yourself that being you is better than being him, or being me, or being that woman over there. "Belonging" as a word only has meaning if you can make other people not belong.In its most puerile form, nationalism takes the form of the temporary fear and loathing of someone wearing the sports jersey of another country - I am especially susceptible to this. But exclusionary ideas of nationalism also lead to things like xenophobia, and DF Malan's Nationalist Party, and Donald Trump, and the shouts that went up at the EFF march on Tuesday for whites to go back to Europe, so I'm not keen on nationalism and the general poppycock that nationalism peddles, especially the nonsensical ideas that those within the current nationalist definition are somehow special and uniquely distinguished from those currently outside it, and anthems are among my least favourite nationalist expressions.La Marseillaise is a grisly piece of doggerel for a civilised nation to chant in public: "Let an impure blood water our furrows!" sing the gruff old monsieurs over their Gauloises and big moustaches. "Tremble! Your parricidal schemes will finally receive their reward!" harmonise the little old ladies over their clacking knitting needles.Advance Australia Fair, by contrast, has the kind of melody, lyrics and rhyme scheme that might have been produced by a committee of conscientious twelve-year-olds:"We are young and free!We've golden soil and wealth for toilOur home is girt by sea!"Firstly, guys, your soil is not golden. Secondly, boasting that your island has sea around it is kind of like boasting that your water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen.The Vietnamese anthem was composed by a patriot named Van Cao in 1945, and probably works well enough before a table tennis test match, filled as it is with such rousing sentiments as "The path to glory is built upon the bodies of our foes".Sadly, Van Cao's career received a setback in 1956 when a crackdown on artistic freedom saw him prohibited from ever composing again. In one of those ironies upon which all nationalisms are built, as though ironies were the bodies of foes, his songs were banned by the state - except for the national anthem.The national anthem of Mauritania is adapted from a 19th-century poem offering instruction in Muslim virtue so uninspiring and difficult to sing that usually Mauritanians pretend it's a purely orchestral composition. Consider these surging sentiments, and you'll understand why Mauritania doesn't win more international sports events:"And just in case a disputantCalls you to dispute about their claimsDo not then dispute on themExcept by way of an external dispute."So I don't really care for national anthems, and when I hear calls to drop Die Stem from ours, it certainly doesn't bother me.I think it's quite astonishing that a song that from 1957 till 1994 represented a racist exclusionist state - the way the Horst Wessel song represented the Nazi state - should have been suffered to live on so long into a new state that aspired to overthrow that exclusionism, but until recently I hadn't given it much thought one way or the other.But then, last week, in the days following the march to parliament, I saw a clip that had been recorded on a cellphone. The gathered students start singing the national anthem. A little way into the first stanza the first stun grenades go off. There's some running and alarm and the camera swings round like it's Cloverfield or The Blair Witch Project, but the kids keep singing. Then the first stanza ends and the next wave of grenades go off, but the kids keep going, they sing the next stanza, Die Stem, and I became quietly emotional.This is an unfashionable thing to say in today's revolutionary moment when the word "white" can only be used as a pejorative adjective - "white supremacy", "white capital", "white privilege" - but I watched the crowd of black kids and white kids standing together, singing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika and Die Stem while stun grenades went off around them, and I know it was just an illusion but it was very beautiful...