Pio Gama Pinto

Pio Gama Pinto was born in Nairobi on 31 March 1927, the son of Goan Catholic immigrants; his father held a post within the colonial administration of Kenya. Around the age of eight he was sent to Goa for his schooling, matriculating at St. Joseph's High School in Arpora and later studying science at Karnatak College in Dharwar. In India he was drawn into the anti-colonial struggle, working in Bombay, taking part in a general strike, and becoming a founding member of the Goa National Congress against Portuguese rule.

Returning to Kenya in 1949, Pinto turned his gifts to the printed and spoken word and to the organizing of working people. He wrote and edited for papers including the Daily Chronicle and Colonial Times, and helped build the East African trade-union movement alongside figures such as Makhan Singh and Fred Kubai. His pen and his organizing made him a quiet architect of the independence cause, financing and steering the nationalist press while others held the spotlight.

In 1960 he founded KANU's newspaper Sauti ya KANU and established Pan African Press, which published Sauti ya Mwafrika, Pan Africa, and Nyanza Times. Elected to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1963 and appointed a Specially Elected Member of the House of Representatives in 1964, he pressed for a socialist path for the young nation and supported liberation movements across the continent, including FRELIMO in Mozambique.

On 24 February 1965 he was shot dead in the driveway of his Nairobi home, his young daughter nearby — the first politician assassinated in independent Kenya. May the honored name of Pio Gama Pinto endure as one who gave his voice, his labor, and his life so that others might be free.