Elected president at the founding of the ANC Youth League in 1944, Lembede died suddenly in 1947 at the age of 33.
In a tribute to his lifelong friend, AP Mda wrote in the Ilanga lase Natal “Young Lembede, one of the most brilliant students that this land has produced, died ‘before his prime’. . .on the threshold of a scholastic, legal and political career, that might have been unparalleled in Black Africa.”