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On Friday morning, the nation woke up to news of the demise of journalist, author and social critic and politician Francis Onapito Ekomoloit.

Mr Dismas Nkunda, a long-time friend and former colleague at The Monitor and the defunct Crusader newspaper, said Ona, as he was popularly known, succumbed to lung cancer at Kampala Hospital early on Friday morning. He was 58.

“They discovered that he had cancer of the lungs, but he had not known. It had progressed to Grade IV, the last stage. So Kampala Hospital told him that it was too late,” Mr Nkunda said on Friday.

It was difficult for Onapito to engage anyone or in any public discourse, however serious it was, without adorning that trademark smile.

That made it difficult for one to imagine the extent of adversity, including poverty, the death of his mother at an early stage and the brunt of a civil war that raged in Teso in the early days of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government that he had to overcome before he could make something out of himself.

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