Azizah Ahmad, the woman who sewed Umno’s first flag

Heavily pregnant with her fourth child, Azizah Ahmad was undeterred. Nothing would keep her from witnessing the greatest event of her life: the proclamation of independence by Tunku Abdul Rahman himself.

For Azizah, a Johorean schoolteacher, the moment carried a significance that went far beyond celebration.

Like everyone else, she cheered as the nation’s first prime minister read the Declaration of Independence and raised his voice in the now-legendary cry of “Merdeka!” seven times.

It was also the culmination of her own journey.

“My late mother fought against the Malayan Union. She was politically active among the women in Johor Bahru. She also told me she was like Umno‘s midwife,” Hamidah Ashari, Azizah’s third daughter, told FMT Lifestyle.

After all, Azizah had been Onn Jaafar’s secretary when he had been forming Umno. She would write down Umno’s constitution while the elder politician, who lived just a few doors away from her family home, dictated it.

Even more impressive, Azizah sewed the very first Umno flag for the party. Her sister sewed the youth wing’s flag.

“They went to Singapore with Hussein Onn and a female chaperone, to Bras Basah Road to buy the cloth for the flags. It took her more than a month to complete it as she sewed it by hand. I don’t know what happened to that flag,” Hamidah said.

During Umno’s early stages of formation, Azizah even followed Onn Jaafar on his many visits to rural areas in Johor to raise the Umno flag there.

So spirited was Azizah’s commitment to the party’s cause that even after Onn Jaafar left Umno, she stayed on, serving as secretary of the women’s wing – a post she won with a majority of votes.

“She always told me … she’s an Umno member from cradle to grave,” Hamidah, 70, said.

Describing her mother as a “very independent, strong-minded career woman” and a “very strong lady”, Hamidah said Azizah – the daughter of Johor’s inspector of religious schools – “could have become a minister if she had continued being active. She knew what she wanted”.

That resolve carried her through many turbulent years. During the Japanese Occupation, Azizah, who became a schoolteacher at just 16, taught children Japanese by day – then studied the language herself at night when soldiers came to her family’s home.

But life shifted when Azizah married at 29. “She didn’t even want to marry,” Hamidah revealed. “She wanted to be a leader, a career woman. But people said she was already old, so she agreed.”

Consequently, marriage and children slowed her political involvement, but Azizah carried the same fire into her work as headmistress of Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Pontian at age 36.

“She was very garang,” Hamidah said with a smile. “Even the male teachers were scared of her! The whole of Pontian town knew her.”

Her leadership shaped her children’s minds, too. “Foremost was study,” Hamidah said. “She always told us, ‘Study, work, don’t depend on your husband. Be financially independent.’”

Azizah read the newspapers daily and listened to every radio bulletin on her beloved Grundig radio.

“That’s how I developed my own interest in international affairs,” added Hamidah, who worked for the foreign affairs ministry for close to 40 years. In fact, Hamidah had been the first female external information officer with Wisam Putra in 1976.

For Hamidah, her mother’s lessons echo even today. “She said, ‘Finally we can rule our own country, not just listen to colonial masters. We shape our own destiny.’

“But she also reminded us to work hard to make sure the independence the older generation fought for is not wasted. Be independent, be united, be strong. That’s what she wanted for us and for the country.”

It’s a message Hamidah still carries in her prayers. “I want our people to be united – proud of Malaysia. Leaders who work for the country and not for themselves. That’s what Merdeka means to me. And it’s what my mother lived for.”