South Africa: The opening shots in what may prove to be a new battle for the hearts and minds of South Africa's youth were fired yesterday on the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising.
At a rally near the site of the 1976 student protests that precipitated the fall of the South Africa's apartheid regime, the country's president Thabo Mbeki urged the youth of today to fight the evils of corruption, and abuse of women and children.
But, as he spoke, a self-confessed adulterer, who is due in court next month on corruption charges, was given a hero's welcome by the youth league of Mr Mbeki's own party.
Former deputy president Jacob Zuma, who was cleared of a rape charge last month but only after making damning admissions about his sexual behaviour, was the focal point of a rival Youth Day event in Durban.
The young faces swarming around him contrasted with the more mature crowd that accompanied Mr Mbeki on a solemn march to the Hector Pieterson memorial, where the first victim of the 1976 riots was said to have been slain. While Mr Mbeki never mentioned Mr Zuma by name, his comments about teaching youth "the importance of safe sex and healthy lifestyles" did not go unnoticed by apparatchiks in the ruling African National Congress.
The president also used the occasion to condemn graft - just six weeks before Mr Zuma's fraud trial is due to open in Durban.
"In the spirit of the morality that inspired the June 16th generation that helped to liberate our country, today's youth should join the fight against women- and child-abuse. They should engage in the struggle against corruption wherever it rears its ugly head, whether in business, in government or in our communities," Mr Mbeki told a 50,000-strong crowd at the FNB football stadium in Johannesburg.
In Durban, Mr Zuma struck a conciliatory tone - and a contrite one - calling for unity in the ANC and urging youths to avoid his example of having unprotected sex with a HIV-positive woman.
Those who shared the platform with him were less diplomatic about the party's divisions, however, with Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of trade union umbrella group Cosatu, reiterating his recent claim that there were signs of the country deteriorating into a dictatorship.
As well as highlighting tensions within the ANC, yesterday's commemorations prompted much soul-searching about the role of youth in contemporary South Africa. Thirty years after Soweto's teenagers rose up against apartheid, many adults accuse the country's youth of being politically apathetic and morally nihilistic.
Mr Mbeki called for an "unwavering commitment" to combating modern-day challenges such as poverty, unemployment, alcohol and drug-abuse, and "Aids and other diseases".
He continued: "The youth of today should honour the martyrs of 1976 by defending the gains of our freedom, refusing to be part of those who disrespect our freedoms by abusing other people, robbing, raping, killing and destroying public and private property."
Almost simultaneously, however, another Youth Day rally was being disrupted by stone-throwing youths - reported sympathisers with lowly paid security guards who have been engaged in a bitter, and bloody, industrial dispute.
