Pio Pinto’s legacy for the Kenyan left

This week on AIAC Talk: Pio Gama Pinto was Kenya’s first post-independence martyr. Why does he matter today?

Pio Gama Pinto, right, in 1964 with members of Nairobi's Goan community. (Image from the collection of Luis Assis Correia, via Frederck Noronha and Flickr CC).

Pio Gama Pinto was a Kenyan socialist activist and intellectual who was assassinated in 1965, shortly after Kenya won independence two years prior. Who was he, why was he feared, and why was his legacy erased?

This week, Will chats with Lena Anyuolo and Nicholas Mwangi, two members of the Organic Intellectuals Network in Kenya that have put together a volume of reflections on Pinto and his legacy called Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Reflect on the Legacy of Pio Gama Pinto (Daraja Press, 2021). Along the way, they also address the state of Kenya’s left, the prospects left unity and how it is approaching the upcoming general election in August.

Listen to the show below, and subscribe via your favorite platform.

Further Reading

Remembering Emma Gama Pinto

To those who did not know Emma Gama Pinto, she was just “the wife of Pio Gama Pinto,” the Kenyan anticolonial fighter, but to those who knew her, she was fearless in her own right.