Harold Sefolo's last words were those of a song dedicated to the country he was about to die for. On a farm in Pienaars River, Limpopo, Sefolo had watched apartheid police kill Jackson Maake and Andrew Makupe by electrocution with a generator used to power a water pump.One of the torturers would later tell the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Sefolo knew that he, too, was about to die and made a final request of his captors: to be allowed to sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica .Once Sefolo he had finished singing, he, too, was electrocuted.Nearly 30 years after the MK operative was murdered the Department of Arts and Culture campaigned to foster patriotism in more than 22000 schools.Last year, Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa told parliament that his department had set aside R34-million for the campaign. As part of the campaign, pupils are taught the correct way to hoist the national flag and the words of the national anthem.Said Mthethwa: "It is imperative that South Africans know who they are and know their national anthem."People should be encouraged to know those things that unite the country, to have oneness as a nation."There are calls to make history a compulsory school subject up to matric, so that children are aware of the sacrifices of the past.In the mid-1990s, when Sefolo's wife, Elizabeth, attended the TRC's hearings, the reforming South Africa was seen by the world as the rainbow nation.People spoke of "Madiba magic" and believed South Africa would evolve into a great multiracial country.Some 20 years later, the rainbow is dimming; reality has set in.There is massive unemployment, service delivery protests, wholesale corruption and a failing economy.It appears that the ANC now wants to divert the nation's attention away from all the negative news by cranking up patriotism.Get the people singing, let the children recite the preamble to the constitution, and make them believe that the country is still on the right path to becoming a great nation.But is this patriotism drive a bit like placing a sticking plaster over the country's gaping social, political and economic wounds?The danger of forming a national identity is that those who do not conform to it will be isolated, and such nationalistic initiatives echo apartheid-era gatherings at the Voortrekker Monument at which the volk were told that they were God's chosen people.Instead of simply reciting the constitution's preamble, should not children be told why that document is considered one of the most democratic in the world?To be South African means living by the values of our constitution .History - remembering how we got here - is an important part of forming national identity.There is the fear that much of the history of the struggle is in danger of being forgotten by the new generation.Recently, Nick Wolpe, the founder of the Liliesleaf Trust, said he had received reports that many of Cambodia's younger generation did not know of the genocide that claimed the lives of 2million people in their country 40 years ago.South Africa could suffer the same fate, he warned.The men who killed Sefolo tried to obliterate him from history.They took his body and those of his two accomplices, packed explosives around them and blew them to pieces.But Sefolo' s remains were found and his story recorded by the TRC.Perhaps one day Sefolo's story will find its way into classrooms and pupils will learn just how much of a privilege it is to sing his song, our national anthem, as free people...