Pio Gama Pinto, a member of the Kenyan parliament by then was felled by an assassin's bullet on February 25, 1965, outside his house in Nairobi.
New details surrounding the death of Pio Gama Pinto have emerged in the new book by independent Kenya's first deputy speaker Fitz De Souza who doubled up as Kenyatta's lawyer at the Kapengura trials.
In the book titled, Foward to Independence, De Souza reveals that founding President Jomo Kenyatta and Pio Pinto had a very tense relationship.
Pinto was opposed to Kenyatta's land policies regarding the fields belonging to Britons who left the country after independence.
At one point, Pio even called Kenyatta a "land grabber". He believed that if the matter was brought at the floor of parliament, there would be a vote-of-no-confidence.
De Souza, who was the house deputy speaker at the time, tried to dissuade him from this plan. He warned him that Kenyatta would never give up power so easily and would fight hard before the throne was taken from him.
He also told him that Kenyans were firmly behind Kenyatta and the plan was only a waste of time.
In February 1965, Kenyatta and Pio had a verbal exchange at parliament buildings.
Souza reports that they were shouting at each other that almost everyone on that wing of the building could hear them. Pio threatened to fix Kenyatta while the angry president fired right back at him verbally.
It was here that Pinto allegedly called Kenyatta a bastard. When Souza then confronted Pio about the insult, he defended himself saying the head of state had called him a bastard first.
“When I heard that, I doubted anyone could have expected to remain in Kenya alive … not after calling President Jomo Kenyatta a 'bastard',” Kenyatta’s lawyer narrated.
However, Pio's close friend Joseph Murumbi, who later became the Vice President, openly defended Jomo Kenyatta, stating that the former president did not order the hit.
The Daily Nation writes that Tom Mboya called Pinto and told him to get out of Nairobi or even the country because of the threat of an unspecified “they” (perhaps there was no need to specify).
Pio escaped to Mombasa for a few days and only came back when he was given the all clear by his close friend, Murumbi. He was killed two days later.
Murumbi was certain it was not Kenyatta who did it but he was equally convinced that it was those around him.
According to Murumbi, people exploited Kenyatta’s age and often took advantage of him.
To date, Pio Gama Pinto's death remains to be one of the most mysterious deaths in the Kenyan political scene.
