She lectured at Makerere University’s Literature Department—before it became the Mass Communications Department—and wrote a column for the New Vision when it was still a 16-page daily. She later served as a cabinet minister, worked as press aide to President Yoweri Museveni and eventually became his senior advisor on public relations.

Yet even with this long list of high-profile positions, Mary Karooro Okurut, who died on August 11 aged 70, also championed women’s rights and mentored young writers with equal energy.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the position she held longest was columnist, given her background in literature and her love for writing. 

She started writing her column in the early 1990s, when she and John Rwabuhungu were the only two columnists at the paper. In the late 1990s, she worked briefly with the Education Service Commission, and in the early 2000s, she started writing a column for the New Vision’s competitor, the Daily Monitor.

Ms Okurut remained fiercely loyal to the governing NRM and staunchly defended its leader, Yoweri Museveni, in her writings. In hiring her as a columnist, Daily Monitor perhaps sought to counterbalance the seemingly endless criticism its editors and opinion columnists levelled at the government.

When the late Hope Kivengere left her post as presidential press secretary, Ms Okurut replaced her, though she held the job for a much shorter time than her predecessor or other presidential press secretaries.

In 2004, she won the by-election for the Bushenyi District woman MP. Years later she held different cabinet positions while still writing her column. By then, she had left the Daily Monitor and returned to the New Vision.

After the 2011 election, Kizza Besigye, who was Museveni’s main challenger, disputed the results and, with limited success, tried to spark Egypt-style demonstrations. Ms Okurut was among the most vocal critics of the “walk-to-work” protesters, named for their tactic of walking to work to highlight the high cost of living.

“Quite a good number of people are dead and scores injured after showdowns that should never have been in the first place had the protesters complied with police regulations,” Ms Okurut wrote in her column.

“By now everybody knows that the motive for the walk-to-work riots has little or nothing to do with the inflation. The rioters simply want to make Kampala … and Uganda at large ungovernable.”

Ms Okurut was among the few Ugandan women of her generation to marry outside her tribe. Her late husband, Stanislaus Okurut, an Etesot and one of the first cabinet ministers after the NRM took power in 1986, died in 2014. She was a Munyankore.

After she was dropped from Cabinet, her public appearances declined, but her support for the NRM remained on full display. She regularly attended retreats at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi.

And in one of her last columns, as the governing party’s primaries drew closer, she wrote about the strengths and weaknesses of lining up behind candidates.

“The NRM mode of lining up behind candidates during the party primaries is hailed by many, as an open, transparent and fair exercise,” she wrote. “Everything being equal, no one should cry foul…After people have cast their votes, the returning officer counts people who have voted for each candidate. Can it get more open and transparent than this?”

She went on: “But it [the practice] has its own demerits. Instances of wives not lining behind their husbands or vice versa abound.”

It was a fitting note to end on: unflinching in her opinions, loyal to her party and ever ready to put her words into print.

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🔴 Obituaries mark the end of a life, but they also honor the stories, achievements, and legacies that remain. When someone important or beloved passes, this is where their story lives on.