On February 24, 1965, Kenya experienced its first political assassination after independence. The life of Pio Gama Pinto was cut short by the colonial system which had already acquired a black face. Before his assassination, the British had already tried to silence him by detaining him. His father died while he was still in prison and was not allowed to attend the burial. This broke him down.
The life of Malcolm X was taken away three days before Pinto was assassinated. The two comrades believed in socialism and although Malcolm X was a Black nationalist, Pinto had managed to influence him to become a Pan-Africanist. The imperialist system could not allow this to continue happening for the two comrades had made great connection and were dedicated to the struggle of the people. Together, Pinto and Malcolm X formed an alliance based upon the suffering of Black Americans and Africans and planned to charge the USA with human rights violation at the United Nations.
Pinto’s death was among the many political assassinations in Kenya that have gone unpunished, especially during the Kenyatta and Moi regimes which carried out massacres and assassinations as a calculated method to maintain themselves and their class in power. This tradition has continued to date; the neocolonial system does not take criticism on its ruthless policies that have continued to cause economic exploitation and social inequality due to the class struggle that Pinto recognized. He preached socialism to the people and its benefits and did not give up in trying to make Kenya a socialist state.
Pio Gama Pinto made great contributions towards the liberation struggle of Kenya. He went as far as learning Kiswahili for easy communication. He worked behind the scenes in every organization he was involved in so as to strengthen its structures and make it more efficient and effective. He worked closely with the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) fighters that were led by Field Marshall Kimathi Waciuri who was arrested and hanged inside Kamiti Maximum Security prison by the colonial government on February 18, 1957. Many of the soldiers were also killed during the war in the forest. Despite all this, the freedom fighters, with the help of Pinto, did not relent: they continued to fight as Pinto went ahead and armed the freedom fighters in their hide-outs. He also worked closely with the freedom fighters’ families and provided them with food and necessary information. Getting inspiration from the Russian revolution, the Mau Mau as a radical movement moved from the peaceful approach of petitioning the colonial activities to the armed struggle having realized that non-violent constitutional agitation had serious limitations. Many of these freedom fighters were assassinated and others put behind bars. Pinto looked for lawyers to help in these cases and started publications to expose the colonial government for killing and looting the people’s properties while blaming it on the Mau Mau to discredit the movement. He made sure all the news went out to avoid monopolization of media houses by the imperialists; without Pinto reporting it would have been impossible to understand all the struggles of the people. The neocolonial system has refused to recognise Pinto as a Mau Mau freedom fighter and it is upon the future generation to re-write history until we have the complete Mau Mau history researched and written. That is when full contributions of Pinto in the struggle shall be well known.
Ideological groundings, strong organization and committed leadership were the main weapons to win against the imperialist war according to Pinto. He saw the need for grounding cadres since the colonial system was trying to prove to people that there were no other options apart from capitalism. Pinto went ahead and acquired funds to set up a political school, the Lumumba Institute to ground party cadres of KANU and mobilize the people to ensure that the ideology was put in place. Socialism started to get a lot of support and it was clear that capitalism is a system to oppress people since it created classes and wouldn’t be able to make its profit unless there were a class of people frustrated enough to sell their labor. It was thus important for the colonial government to end the life of Pinto before socialism could take over and before people well understood class struggle. His views were very clear; he had a clear political understanding and social consciousness. Pinto expressed himself as a socialist through his actions and writings. He lived by his principles and died by his principles. Kenyatta later closed down Lumumba institute after they had killed Pinto.
Pinto dedicated his life towards the liberation struggle of the people. His life was unfortunately cut short by the imperialist system. This however motivates us to continue with the struggle because if we do not carry on with the class struggle, we shall continue to languish in poverty. We must understand that Uhuru must truly mean freedom for the people to be free of exploitation and poverty. Uhuru must be Uhuru for the masses.
