Anton Lembede, born on this day in 1914, was a South African lawyer, activist, and founding president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) who played a key role in the ideological development of African nationalism.

Lembede was born to a peasant family in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He showed great academic potential as student, studying at the prestigious Adams College despite his family's poverty. Lembede later earned a law degree from the University of South Africa in 1942.

Lembede was the principal thinker behind launching the African National Congress Youth League. In 1943, he led Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, and other to-be prominent figures in the anti-apartheid struggle in forming the organization, becoming the first elected general president of the ANC Youth League in 1944. The league wanted to reform the ANC, which they described as "a body of gentlemen with clean hands".

In 1945 Lembede, Water Sisulu, and Oliver Tambo almost succeeded in persuading the Transvaal Congress to expel the communists from its membership for opposing African nationalism.

In 1947, at the age of 33, Lembede died suddenly from an unknown intenstinal illness. Despite his short lifespan, Lembede influenced prominent South African thinkers such as Nelson Mandela, who wrote "From the moment I heard Lembede speak, I knew I was seeing a magnetic personality who thought in original and often startling ways."

Mandela also credited Lembede's ideas as influencing his own - "Lembede's views struck a chord in me...I came to see the antidote as militant African nationalism."

Lembede is regarded as the architect of the "Programme of Action" that was adopted as a guiding document by the 1949 meeting of the African National Congress.

"We have to go out as apostles to preach the New Gospel of Africanism and to hasten and bring about the birth of a new nation. Such minor insignificant differences of languages, customs etc. will not hinder or stop the irresistible onward surge of the African spirit."

- Anton Lembede