http://www.heraldgoa.in/Review/Kenya%E2%80%99s-Lasting-Goan-Connection/82174.html
Kenya’s Lasting Goan Connection On December 12 Kenya celebrated 50 years of its proclamation as a Republic. It had got its independence a year earlier. Of the thousands of Goans who had made Kenya their home, a few names stand out for their contribution to the Kenyan freedom movement. By AlEXANDRE MONIZ BARBOSA | 14 Dec, 2014, 11:21PM IST To a large number of Goans the first name they associate with Kenya is that of Pio Gama Pinto. He was Independent Kenya’s first martyr, gunned down on the streets of Nairobi a little over a year after Kenyan Independence. A journalist, politician, freedom fighter, Gama Pinto was one of the many Goans who helped build the Kenyan nation and among the few from Goa who actively participated in the movement for the East African country’sIndependence. There is perhaps no other country in the world, in whose movement for Independence Goans have contributed as much as in that of Kenya. There are three names that stand out. Besides Gama Pinto, there is Fitz de Souza, a lawyer who went on to become the deputy speaker of the Kenyan Parliament and was part of the constitution team and Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi, who had a Goan father and was the second vice president of Kenya. Kenya of the 1950s and early 1960s was anything but peaceful. The anticolonial movement, the Mau Mau revolution, had turned the country into a pressure point. In its attempt to subdue the movement, the British colonial government viewed it as a rebellion leading to a major military conflict. Thousands of persons, including Asians, were killed during the years before Kenya got its independence. In such a situation, it wouldn’t have been an easy decision for the Goan migrants in an African country to stay on and even join the natives in their fight to oust the colonial power. Writer Vivek Menezes in an online discussion on Goanet posted saying, “In such a time of terror, and given the stark threat to their lives and livelihood, it is in fact remarkable that so many Goans chose to overtly or subtly resist the colonial authorities who had total control over their wellbeing. That resistance went far beyond the outstanding contributions of Fitz de Souza, Pio Gama Pinto and Joseph Murumbi Zuzarte.” Perhaps the Goans were inspired by India’s Independence in 1947 and followed free India’s transition to a vibrant democracy. Gama Pinto surely was. Kenya-born Gama Pinto was sent to Goa as a boy for further studies. Thiswas soon after Indian Independence and when he left he took back with him the democratic ideals that led to his plunge into Kenyan politics. He spent four years imprisoned on Manda Island and was the only Asian of 7,000 African Mau Mau detainees on the island. Gama Pinto is described as a socialist and freedom fighter. He was a political detainee from 1954 to 1959 and a Member of Parliament from 1963 till he was shot by an assassin on February 24, 1965. He was at that time an ideological strategist from Vice President Oginga Odinga’s left-leaning wing of the KANU. When Kenya got its independence in December 1963, it got Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. Kenyatta, a revered figure in the country, had earlier worked closely with another Goan, Fitz de Souza, who went on to become the deputy speaker of the Kenyan Parliament. De Souza was one of three lawyers of Asian descent in the team that defended Kenyatta and his colleagues at the trial at Kapenguria on charges of managing the Mau Mau armed rebellion against British colonial rule in Kenya. The third person, Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi was Kenya’s second vice president and was also the country’s first foreign minister. He resigned in September 1966 and devoted his life to collecting works of African art. Part of that collection is on permanent display at the Kenya National Archives in Nairobi. Of these three, only de Souza lives. But it is not just in Kenya’s struggle for independence that Goans played a role. Even after Independence a large number stayed back and helped build the nation. “Even after decolonization, it is highly relevant that so many thousands of Goans stayed in Kenya to ‘nation-build’ in ‘free Africa’. >From athletes to administrators to educationists, here too the contribution is far disproportionate to small numbers. As with Pakistan post-1947, the Goan record of staying the course and trying to shape the new nation is both impressive and honorable. That the dream became tarnished in no way takes away from the idealism and very real achievements when ‘the iron was hot’,” writes Menezes. Eddie Fernandes,making a presentation on the Goan contribution to the Kenyan movement at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival mentioned quite a few names of Goans who played an important role in Kenya, before and after Independence. Among those are ACL de Souza, the doctor who edited the newspaper Goan Voice; Eddie Sadashiva Pereira a nationalist who was imprisoned during the independence movement; Jawaharlal Rodrigues editor of Daily Nation, JM Nazareth a lawyer and nationalist; and Rosendo Ribeiro. There is still a Goan community in Kenya, small and dwindling, but soldiering on. In writing about Kenya and Goan contribution in the country, one name that can’t be overlooked is that of Seraphino Antao. He was not a politician. Instead he made his name in the field as an athlete who won the Commonwealth Games gold medal in 1962 for the 100 and 220 yards. Such was his hero status in the country that he was Independent Kenya’s first flag bearer at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.The story of Goa’s tryst with Kenya has not ended. There is still a Goan community in the East African nation that soldiers on building the nation their ancestors fought for.