This Article First Appeared In The Scroll On Nov 15, 2022.
On a February morning in 1965, a celebrated Kenyan freedom fighter, journalist and politician stepped outside his home in the affluent Nairobi neighbourhood of Westlands. A charismatic man of Goan origin, he got into his car with his two-year old daughter and was set to drive away when a gunman shot him dead. The assassination of Pio Gama Pinto, which happened three days after his friend Malcolm X was killed in the United States, shocked the newly-independent East African nation. A month short of his 38th birthday, Pinto had become free Kenya’s first political martyr..