Pio Gama Pinto. Brave. Patriotic. Ideologically clear, uncompromising, unrelenting, a true freedom fighter! Freedom for our country, freedom for the people of Africa.
Socialism was always a strong part of the dreams Pio Gama Pinto had for Kenya. He was born in Kenya to Goan parents who were also first generation Goans born in Kenya Indeed for a long time he knew no other soil than this country and his nationalist views reflected this. It was clear he identified with the land and the people. Pinto studied in India between 1938 and 1947. He worked briefly in the army and telegrams office in India before going back to Kenya in 1949. As he continued to develop his political stance he was strongly against oppression and aligned himself with the people. This was the beginning of the push for social justice and equality in Kenya. Pinto was in fact, a committed social justice warrior. At age 17, Pinto protested against Goan oppression in Bombay by Portuguese colonialism; as a student, he had to leave India to return to Kenya to avoid arrest by Portuguese authorities. In Kenya he came face to face with British racism and class exploitation of the indigenous people. Fixated on the far but present hope of liberation. This must have been the mood as patriots incarcerated on Manda Island. Prisoners of the seemingly eternal struggle for truth, justice and rights. Operation Anvil with its biased hand had landed a great deal of otherwise innocent men and women behind bars in makeshift dungeons dotted across East Africa. This particular prison held Pio Gama Pinto who was a journalist chronicling and clandestinely supporting a guerrilla movement [Kenya Land and Freedom Army] demanding change and an end to colonialist aggression and occupation. The year is 1954 and the calls for the Union Jack [British Flag] to be lowered grew ever louder. They ached for Land. Liberation. Freedom to be and be with dignity.
Reflection
The Mau Mau are famous for the oathing ceremonies they conducted to recruit fighters into their revolutionary army. The ritual bonds the fighters in a similar way to the way ideological clarity unites cadres under a single purpose; the pursuit of justice. We may never know if Pinto participated in such an event but it is clear from his resolve that he was a man of principle and with a cause worth dying for. Thrusting himself into the political scene, he joined with Joseph Murumbi and Walter Odede to push for nationalism under the Kenya African Union (KAU). Pinto, the mental heavyweight, was a key component of the think tank of this party that would later become KANU. He was a man of many hats, a writer, journalist, radio presenter, trade unionist, editor, clerk who resigned from the Daily Chronicle, Congress posts and India Radio in 1951 to concentrate fully on the gathering storm that was the Kenyan liberation struggle. Pio Gama Pinto maintained a strong socialist ideology in his work. Recognizing the importance of land and its occupation he began to articulate this question diligently. He translated a 200-page Kikuyu Memorandum on land and forwarded grievances and excesses of the settler colonial regime to British MPs, especially after the arrest of the Kapenguria Six. To further proletarian propaganda newspapers were established called the High Command which Pinto was the editor in chief. At this, the colonial government arrested him and under heavy guard locked him up in Manda Island with hardcore Mau Mau comrades. They held him there for four years and a few months of isolation in Kabarnet. However, the battle for Kenya’s independence had been won by the strong will of the Kenyan people. To date, Pio Gama Pinto remains one of the few Asians to be jailed during the war.
This was not the end as Pinto intensified his quest for regional liberation and the establishment of popular socialist regimes which he hoped would deliver the proletariat from exploitation. He returned to India in 1960 to support the Goan struggle against the Portuguese. While there he also began to identify with the struggle of Mozambique and especially with FRELIMO, which was fighting the vice of Portuguese aggression. He supported their struggle using the progressive government in Tanganyika (Tanzania). Pio alongside predecessors like Makhan Singh and Chege Kibachia fathered trade unions and their importance in leveling the workers’ struggle is undisputed. Oftentimes I wonder to myself, what would the present Kenya look like had Pinto’s ideas and dreams for Kenya materialized? That image, of a beautiful country, with equity and social justice, fuels my patriotism always.
While serving as an MP in Kenya’s newly formed parliament, Pinto would fall out with Jomo Kenyatta and the State machinery regarding Sessional Paper No 10. Dr Fitz De Souza, who was also in parliament at the time, recounts a shouting contest in the halls of the caucus. Whether this took place or not, Pinto was obviously and vocally against the legalization of capitalism and the invitation to neo-colonialism that a young Kenya was heading to. Ego bruised and embarrassed the status quo had planned to eliminate Pinto to give way for their schemes to hijack Kenya’s popular revolution. After meeting Malcolm X in Nairobi in 1959, the two discovered how much they had in common and Pinto had planned to go to the United Nations to decry the plight of black people in America.
In 1964, as deep contradictions began to appear in the top brass and Pinto increasingly began to disagree with the regime. He had worked on Soviet diplomacy that would see the creation of the Lumumba Institute to train Kanu Cadres. How revolutionary! Pio Gama Pinto was pushing for political education in 1964. This did not sit well with the corrupt members of the early cabinet and in 1965 Pinto was assassinated in full view of his young family in cold blood. According to an unpublished tribute by his younger brother, the late Rosario Da Gama Pinto, the killing was imminent: ‘Pio was often threatened and even a month before his death was aware of the plot to kill him by prominent politicians. Although upset about the plot, he carried on as normal duties until his assassination.’
‘Pio was murdered to silence him and put an end to his dream to implement socialism, the ideals for which the people of Kenya had formed a government. Now that Independence had been gained, and the armed forces’ loyalty had been bought [British soldiers were still in Kenya to provide further security], those in power considered it a convenient time to assassinate Pinto as a warning to other dedicated nationalists,’ he wrote in the tribute titled Pinto, My Brother.
We were greatly inspired by Pinto. We had to teach upcoming generations about him. At Mathare Social Justice Centre Matigari kids book club we had a class on his grave site at City Park cemetery Nairobi. We sang Wimbo wa Mapambano together and readout aloud the words engraved on his grave: If I have been extinguished, yet there arise a thousand beacons from the spark I bore.
Pio Gama Pinto, Ni Njamba wa Bururi.
