WHO MURDERED COMRADE PETER MASINDE?

29 June 2026

The Central Organising Committee of the Communist Party Marxist Kenya extends its deepest condolences and revolutionary solidarity to the family, friends, and fellow workers of Comrade Peter Masinde, a militant warehouse worker whose life was cut short under conditions that expose the brutality of exploitation in Kenya’s neocolonial economy.

Today, the Communist Party Marxist Kenya joined the Warehouse Workers Committee and hundreds of workers outside the gates of the National Cereals and Produce Board warehouses in Shimanzi, Mombasa, to pay our final respects to Comrade Peter Masinde. Our presence was not only an act of mourning but also an act of struggle.

Who murdered Comrade Peter Masinde?

This is the question that confronts every worker, every trade unionist, and every patriotic Kenyan today.

If a worker spends years producing wealth while living in poverty, if he sleeps in bushes outside the warehouses because his wages cannot afford him decent shelter, if he falls ill because he has no access to healthcare, and if he dies before receiving proper medical attention, can we honestly say that no one is responsible?

While the precise medical cause of Comrade Masinde’s death must be established through proper investigation, the political responsibility for the conditions that produced this tragedy cannot be ignored. His death is not an isolated incident. It is the inevitable consequence of an economic system organised around the relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of human life.

Comrade Peter Masinde was a piece rate warehouse worker and an active organiser who stood at the forefront of the workers’ general strikes organised throughout the Shimanzi and Changamwe areas. He earned the respect of his fellow workers through his courage, discipline, and unwavering commitment to collective struggle.

Like countless warehouse workers who are forced to sleep outside their workplaces because poverty denies them decent housing, Comrade Masinde became ill without access to adequate medical care. Most of these workers have neither medical insurance nor meaningful social protection. By the time he reached Makadara Referral Hospital, he was pronounced dead.

Foreign multinational corporations operating in the shipping industry and private warehousing sector continue to extract enormous superprofits from the sweat and blood of Kenyan workers. Yet these same corporations routinely refuse to implement the 2023 to 2024 Collective Bargaining Agreement, deny workers access to social health insurance and social security, and maintain conditions that violate both Kenyan labour law and internationally recognised occupational health and safety standards.

Workers handle dangerous cargo without adequate protective clothing, gloves, boots, eye protection, or respiratory equipment. They endure excessive working hours, unpaid overtime, and long periods of waiting without compensation. After generating immense wealth through loading and unloading goods, they retire not to homes but to bushes behind warehouses where they sleep under the open sky.

The death of Comrade Peter Masinde cannot be viewed in isolation from the long history of repression directed against militant warehouse workers. For years, workers in the port and warehousing sector have reported that multinational corporations and their local collaborators have relied on hired militia armed with crude weapons to intimidate, assault, and terrorise militant workers who organise strikes and demand the implementation of their rights. Workers have also raised persistent allegations of suspicious illnesses and possible cases of indirect poisoning targeting militant worker leaders. These serious allegations demand an independent, transparent, and comprehensive investigation. The Communist Party Marxist Kenya shall not rest until the truth is established and all those responsible, whether through violence, intimidation, criminal negligence, or any other means used to suppress the organised working class, are held accountable.

The National Cereals and Produce Board, despite being a state corporation, also bears political responsibility for perpetuating exploitative labour conditions. Today’s procession outside its gates reflected the anger of workers who have endured years of exploitation and indignity.

This reality exposes the class character of the neocolonial state. State owned enterprises increasingly function according to the interests of finance capital rather than the needs of the Kenyan people. Instead of defending labour, they facilitate the extraction of surplus value for the benefit of foreign monopoly capital and its local comprador allies.

The death of Comrade Peter Masinde fills us with profound sorrow. Yet the working class has never transformed grief into surrender. We shall transform our pain into organisation, our mourning into struggle, and our anger into revolutionary determination.

The Communist Party Marxist Kenya, together with the Warehouse Workers Committee, shall conduct a thorough enquiry into the circumstances surrounding Comrade Masinde’s death and pursue accountability wherever responsibility is established. We call upon the relevant state authorities to cooperate fully with this process and to ensure that no evidence is concealed or destroyed.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to Comrade Peter Masinde’s family as they prepare to lay him to rest in Bungoma. We stand firmly with them and affirm that his contribution to the struggle of the working class shall never be forgotten.

The Communist Party Marxist Kenya shall continue to participate actively in the economic struggles of workers through the Warehouse Workers Committee and revolutionary trade union work. For too long, genuine workers’ organisations have been undermined by yellow trade union leaderships dominated by labour aristocratic elements that collaborate with capital instead of confronting it.

Economic struggle remains an indispensable school of class struggle. Through the fight for wages, safe working conditions, dignity, and democratic rights, workers develop organisation, class consciousness, and confidence. Yet economic struggle alone cannot abolish exploitation. It may secure temporary reforms, but it cannot eliminate the social relations that produce exploitation itself.

It is therefore the historic responsibility of the Communist Party to unite the immediate economic struggles of workers with the broader political struggle for state power. Every battle against wage theft, casualisation, unsafe workplaces, unemployment, and imperialist exploitation must become part of the revolutionary movement to defeat imperialism, overthrow comprador rule, and complete the National Democratic Revolution.

The working class remains the only consistently revolutionary and leading class in the National Democratic Revolution. In alliance with the poor peasantry and all patriotic classes oppressed by imperialism and comprador domination, it constitutes the decisive force capable of liberating Kenya from neocolonial rule.

The Communist Party Marxist Kenya is the organised and concentrated political expression of the historic interests of the working class. History has entrusted the working class not merely with resisting exploitation but with abolishing it. Through its revolutionary Party, the workers shall organise themselves, educate themselves, seize political leadership, and advance Kenya towards national liberation, people’s democracy, and ultimately socialism.

The greatest tribute we can pay to Comrade Peter Masinde is not simply to mourn him. It is to organise where he organised, to struggle where he struggled, and to complete the revolutionary task to which he dedicated his life.

Long live the struggle of the working class.

Long live the unity of workers and peasants.

Forward to the National Democratic Revolution.

Forward to Socialism.

Central Organising Committee

Communist Party Marxist Kenya