The youth of the country should stand up against the perpetrators of xenophobic violence, President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday.

Mbeki was one of numerous politicians who addressed youth day issues on Monday.

Speaking at a University of the Western Cape gathering, Mbeki said the youth had a responsibility to protect foreign nationals.

"One of your immediate and critical responsibilities is to protect our fellow Africans who live in our country from the cowardly attacks by criminals, which we have seen here in Cape Town and other parts of our country in the last few weeks."

The Young Communist League dedicated Youth Day to all those who had suffered during the recent xenophobic violence.

The organisation said in a statement: "We dedicate our June 16 to all the victims of the recent despicable and inhumane xenophobic attacks that have engulfed the country in recent months.

"As the YCL we strongly believe that these attacks are a manifestation of an embedded failure by our nascent democratic government to provide quality services to all our people and an absence of leadership from the high echelons of power."

'No one is above the ANC'

African National Congress president Jacob Zuma told an ANC Youth League rally in Thaba'Nchu that the ANC was expected to focus on disciplining bad behaviour within its ranks.

"No one is above the ANC," Zuma said.

Zuma said the party had from January focused on building unity but would now focus on discipline.

The president of the IFP, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, said young people did not understand the value of being politically involved.

He was addressing a crowd at the Princess Magogo Stadium in KwaMashu.

"I fear that the youth who are going to the polling stations for the first time next year grew up in a South Africa so different from the one I and my generation grew up in, that they may not see the value of being politically involved," Buthelezi said.

DA leader Helen Zille said great challenges for the youth remained, and just like the young lions of 1976, young people in SA faced an uncertain future.

Speaking at Mitchells Plain near Cape Town, Zille pointed out that two out of every five South Africans did not have a job and up to 70 percent of young people were unemployed.

The Congress of SA Trade Unions said in its Youth Day message that young people in 2008 were confronted with a different struggle, which needed to revive the spirit of 1976,

"They are growing up in a very different and in many ways a far better world than the apartheid dungeon in which their fathers and mothers spent their youth."

Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille urged young people to go for HIV/Aids tests if they had taken risks sexually.

De Lille was speaking at an ID Youth Day celebration in Worcester in the Boland District.

De Lille also urged young people to say no to gangsterism and drugs.

AfriForum Youth said government should exempt the youth from affirmative action.

"AfriForum Youth has announced that it does not feel at liberty to participate in Youth Day celebrations, as a large section of the South African youth does not experience the freedom and equality promised to them by government.

"As a result, AfriForum Youth undertakes to step up its campaign for the exemption of the youth from affirmative action with new initiatives and protest actions in the coming months."

Sapa