Mama Fela of Burma!

pix credit: aungsan.com

“She is like an infernal spirit sent by God to confound and torment the

tormentors of Burma and all dictators of the world, be they in khaki or agbada”

My friend, women are powerful o!

Are you just knowing that? From time immemorial, women have been known to have bottom power. And they have always used it to get what they want.

Shh... I’m not talking of Eve’s bottom power, that honeypot of sweet nothing. I’m talking of strong women who have influenced events in their immediate environment and the world at large with their vision and commitment to selfless service. Women like Corazon Aquino, the late president of the Philippines, who led “People Power” that resulted in the overthrow of the Ferdinand Marcos regime; Rosa Parks, the African American icon of the civil rights movement who refused to vacate her bus seat for a white passenger and subsequently changed the complexion of the struggle for racial equality; our own Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Mama Fela, who led an all-women opposition against the then Alake of Abeokuta that resulted in the hapless king’s abdication of the throne; the women of Aba who, in 1929, led the riots against excessive tax by the colonial masters, and many others in contemporary history.

By the way, sorry to interrupt you, whose picture are you holding? Is it that of your oyinbo sweet sixteen?

For where? This woman you are looking at is a sixty-something, fire-spitting product of God’s creatively activist imagination.

Sure? You mean this janjala woman? This lepa shandy?

Shhh! You are playing with fire. She is what the ngbati ngbati people call obinrin meta (three-in-one woman). Some may even call her iwin, a sort of enfant terrible, to the powers that “ought not to be” in her native country.

Where is that?

Burma, of course. Or is it Myanmar or whatever? Just one of those “yanmar yanmar” countries still under military dictatorship.

You mean this is the woman that has been causing the Burmese generals sleepless nights? What’s her name again?

Aung San Suu Kyi. That’s the iwin, the obinrin meta, the ogbonge amazon, the enfant terrible, the scourge of military dictatorships and arrowhead of the pro-democracy movement in Burma.

It appears you know a lot about this woman whose name I cannot even pronounce. Is it because she is a paragon of beauty? Or is it because she is doing what many a he-man cannot do, especially in Africa? But before you tell her story, please show me why this woman is obinrin meta and why you call her iwin.

Simple. As you will soon discover, she is like an infernal spirit sent by God to confound and torment the tormentors of Burma and all dictators of the world, be they in khaki (uniform) or agbada. As for her being called obinrin meta, that’s also easily explainable. Metaphorically speaking, she is a combination of brain, beauty and brawn. She is pretty, powerful and fearless, fearless like Gani. If you are in doubt, ask the generals who continue to sleep with one eye open because of the fire they have placed on their roof. She is an untouchable rose among thorns. And literally speaking, she is three persons rolled into one as her name, Aung San Suu Kyi, suggests. Aung San is derived from her father, General Aung San, who is considered to be the father of modern-day Burma, having negotiated the country’s independence from the British in 1947. Kyi comes from her mother, Khin Kyi, who was appointed the Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960. And Suu is from her grandmother. She is the third child of her family. Her father was assassinated the same year he helped negotiate independence for his country. She grew up with her mother and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo. The former got drowned in a swimming pool accident in 1953 when she was eight years old. The other brother emigrated to the United States of America and later acquired American citizenship. While on tour of diplomatic duty with her mother, she made sure she continued her education, earning a degree in Politics in India and later going to Oxford to have another in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1969. She was at the United Nations for three years, working primarily on budget matters. In 1972, she got married to Dr Michael Aris, a Tibetian scholar. They had two sons, Alex and Kim Aris, in 1973 and 1977 respectively. In 1985, she got her PhD in Oriental Studies from the University of London.

She must be a very richly endowed bourgeois.

Not exactly. Her foray into politics has turned everything virtually upside down for her but the stoic character that she is, there is no giving up. In 1988, she returned from London to Burma to take care of her ailing mother and test her bearing in the political waters of Burma. She helped in the formation of the National League for Democracy and became its secretary-general. The party won the 1990 general elections called by the military junta and by virtue of her position, she was to become the prime minister. Her party supporters were agog with expectations but, suddenly, a Babangida, a sort of “devil ex machina” (permit the jollof expression), surfaced from nowhere to annul the election and the military refused to hand over power to her. To date, she has been placed under house arrest 14 times. As it is typical of malevolent dictatorships, the Burmese military regime has turned deaf ears to all humanitarian appeals to temper ‘justice’ with mercy. For instance, she dared not go abroad to meet her ailing husband who eventually died of cancer in 1999 because she would not have been allowed back into the country. Instead, she opted to stay and tend to the pro-democracy struggle. She also remains separated from her children who live in London and her only remaining brother. The struggle is her life. She has once again proved like Mama Fela, the ideological matriarch of the Ransome-Kuti family, that it does not matter who wrestles the monster to the ground — man or woman — for as long as the predator is conquered. Gani must have been very proud of her. He was wont to say if the male rat cannot move fast enough it should make way for the pregnant tortoise. Who is our own Aung San Suu Kyi?

Aung San Suu Kini (what)?