Farewell after almost four decades

After highlighting on women’s issues for 39 years, Utusan Melayu columnist stops writing as the curtain falls on the newspaper this month.

WHEN the 80-year-old newspaper company Utusan Melayu ceased operation officially on Oct 9, one of the “casualties” was Maimunah Yusof’s column, “Di Celah-Celah Kehidupan”.

Maimunah started her column in 1980 in Mingguan Malaysia, the Sunday edition of Utusan Malaysia.

Maimunah joined the company in 1968 as a reporter. Utusan Malaysia, the Romanised version of the company’s first newspaper was hardly a year old.

It took the company 28 years after the publication of Utusan Melayu in jawi (first published in 1939) to come out with the Romanised version. Berita Harian was already 10 years old in 1967.

In 1980, Maimunah was appointed deputy editor of Mingguan Malaysia. The editor was Taib Ahmad.

She started the column immediately after that. Her last column appeared on Sept 29,2019.

She wrote her column uninterruptedly for 39 years.

She probably holds the record as the one who had the longest-running column in the country.

Her column was hugely popular. She wrote mostly about women struggling in a man’s world, about misogynist attitude towards them and about how religion and culture were conveniently used to marginalise women.

Every week without fail Maimunah would highlight mostly on the plight of women.

A wife left in tatters when the husband left for a younger woman or a single mother’s struggle to raise her children or sharing the experience of another woman trying to make sense why the religious authorities were not helping to settle her divorce case after waiting for six years or the story of poverty among single parents.

In one of my writings, “Asalkan Lelaki Jahat, Kejam dan Patut Dicederakan” (If he’s a man, he’s bad, cruel and deserved to be hurt) in my column, “Nota Kaki” in Utusan Malaysia (June 2,1997), I commented that in Maimunah’s column one can find few good men.

I was told she personally spoke to the women involved or read about them in the media and perhaps heard about them while gossiping.

I was the chief editor of the Utusan Melayu group then.

I knew Maimunah’s column was one of the reasons people bought Mingguan Malaysia.

She has written at least 2,000 articles for her column and compiled some of the best in two books.

I am not sure if anyone has written that many articles for so long.

All newspapers have columnists and most editors have their column. My predecessors at Utusan Melayu, the late Tan Sri Melan Abdullah, Tan Sri Mazlan Abdullah and Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin were all notoriously opinionated.

They got into trouble because of their writings.

So too my contemporaries – the late VK Chin of The Star (and later Datuk Ng Poh Tip and Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai), Datuk CC Liew of Sin Chew, Datuk Kadir Jasin of the New Straits Times and Datuk Mohd Nazri Abdullah of the Berita Harian.

They have others writing for them too.

Back then, the newspapers were often scrutinised including the headlines and subheads.

The joke among us was that sub-editors can get us into trouble just by the headings they choose!

There was also a joke among editors, to survive long, don’t write anything at all. Stay clear from writing any opinion pieces.

Some did and survived happily untill retirement age, so to speak.

Among my contemporaries, Kadir is known for his “Other Thots” that went on from 1992 to 2001 in the New Straits Times.

When he left the group, he continued “Other Thots” in Malaysian Business until the demise of the publication.

Kadir too had a column in Berita Harian, with a nomenclature “Kunta Kinte”, from 1987 to 1993.

He continued the column with a slightly different name “Kunta Kinte Original” from 2009 to 2011.

Wong has been writing his “On the Beat” since February 1997 and continues until today.

I was writing “Lanang Sejagat” to replace Zam’s “Awang Selamat” until I left the group in May 1998.

I started writing a weekly column for the New Straits Times in 2002 (“Point Blank”), it lasted 13 years.

It ended when I left Media Prima which owns the News Straits Times group in August 2015. I have been writing for The Star fortnightly since April 18,2016.

Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir had her fortnightly column (“In Liberal Doses”) in The Star since 1991. She “took a break” (her own words) in 2017.

Currently she is contributing monthly for this newspaper.

The tradition of writing “pojok” (literally a “corner”, or a column in a newspaper that is meant to be humorous and satirical) is uniquely a Malay and Indonesian trend.

In Malaya, it was popularised by A. Rahim Kajai, the founder editor of Utusan Malayu.

There have been many “pojok” writers in the Malay newspapers, the tradition lasts to this day.

And as many columnists writing in the Malay and English papers.

But Maimunah outlasts them all!

Johan Jaaffar was a journalist, editor and for some years chairman of a media company, and is passionate about all things literature and the arts. The views expressed here are entirely his own.