MARKED MEN: MALCOLM X AND PINTO

Kenyan freedom fighter Pio Gama Pinto was assassinated 60 years ago. He was one of Kenya’s leading socialist voices and, in the spirit of internationalism, developed a brotherly relationship with the revolutionary activist Malcom X. In this clip, Dick Gregory, a Black writer, activist and social critic, explains their close bond that was first formed during Malcolm X's 1959 visit to Kenya.

Pio Gama Pinto, a Kenyan revolutionary of Asian origin, was deeply involved in Kenya’s struggle for independence. Both he and X were fighting similar fights against oppression but on different sides of the Atlantic. Together, they planned a joint strategy to combat injustices. Notably, Pinto advocated taking the US to the UN for its treatment of Black people. Both voices posed a danger to the status quo and were tragically killed within three days of each other. Pinto’s killing, on 24 February 1965, was Kenya’s first political assassination.

An accomplished journalist and propagandist, Pinto used his skills to publicise the cause of African freedom through political pamphlets and press articles. When the colonial government declared a state of emergency in 1952 and detained most African leaders, he was involved in funnelling weapons to Mau Mau resistance fighters.

Pinto had to die because he was perhaps the perfect African socialist in a Kenya whose independence was hijacked by capitalist elites. He was virtually at war with those accused of land-grabbing - including Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta and his ‘Kiambu mafia’ (a group of the elite from Kenya's Central province) - and with Western capitalism led by the US and British governments.

Pinto was shot as he drove out of his Westlands home in Nairobi. Though departed, his legacy lives on in the millions of Africans keeping up the fight for a fully liberated and dignified Africa. Rest with the ancestors, Pio Gama Pinto.