The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (75 page)

Philip Moore (left) and Antony Head at Eden Hall, the UK deputy high commissioner’s residence, Singapore, 1964.

Head had a good feel for Africa and for the Commonwealth African leaders. He believed that a visit to them by a mission of ministers from the new Malaysian states would win their sympathy in international forums like the United Nations. He guffawed when I said the Tunku believed the Africans were slow-witted, for Head had met many Africans smarter than the Tunku, quite a few of whom had taken Firsts at Oxford. He sensed that I was a restless, active person who was keen to do something to counter Sukarno’s propaganda offensive. He suggested that I get the Tunku to send me to Africa to win their support, which he thought would be useful on the psychological front while the British held the military front. He also foresaw that it would make me better known internationally, which would mean that if things ever came to the point where the Tunku wanted to lock me up, there would be a bigger price to pay.

I put the idea to the Tunku, and to my surprise, he readily agreed. Confrontation had taken a sombre turn. The first burst of excitement and even enthusiasm that had inspired demonstrations outside the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur had subsided. The Tunku went around the country making speeches to arouse Malayan nationalism, since Malaysia was too new a concept. But from private conversations with him, I knew he was fearful of the pull that Sukarno’s rhetoric could have on Malayan Malays, especially recent immigrants, the first- or second-generation descendants of Sumatrans and Javanese.

I myself had complete faith in the capabilities of the British, and was blissfully unaware that their policy of active opposition to Confrontation
could not be sustained if the US government took a contrary line. I had paid scant attention when the press reported the US representative to the Malaysia celebrations of 17 September in Kuala Lumpur as saying that America was in no position to take sides in the dispute. But diplomatic documents from the British archives of that period disclose grave concern over the ambivalent attitude of the Americans. Their assessment was that the Americans feared Britain would be overstretched by Confrontation and ultimately the United States would have to shoulder the burden. They also feared that by thwarting Sukarno, the British would be discrediting a non-communist government in Jakarta, thus turning Indonesia over to the communists, which would pose a threat to US bases in the Philippines.

The British must have worked hard to get the Kennedy administration to suspend at least some forms of US economic aid to Indonesia and ban fresh arms deliveries of Lockheed spare parts in November 1963. To show their own total commitment and resolve, the British had announced in December that Australian and New Zealand forces would join them in the defence of Malaysia against mounting Indonesian military incursions.

At the urging of the British, the Tunku had meanwhile stopped wavering in his attitude towards Indonesia. Sukarno had made a speech on 3 December claiming that the first UN survey mission in North Borneo had not been carried out in accordance with democratic procedures. He promised to welcome Malaysia if a second survey showed that its people wanted to be a part of the Federation. A spokesman of the Malaysian ministry of external affairs turned down the offer, but it was clear that it was the Tunku himself who had refused it. A few days later, a big bomb exploded in Sennett Estate, a middle-class suburban area, wrecking a car and killing two men. These were the first casualties of Confrontation in Singapore; we prepared for more trouble. On 18 December, the Tunku disclosed an Indonesian plot to blow up the Pasir
Panjang Power Station, the water mains between the island and Johor, and other vital installations. At the same time, I revealed that an Indonesian naval attaché had been training saboteurs from Singapore, and that the Indonesians had set up dummy firms for the import of weapons.

34. Winning Friends in Africa

Syed Ja’afar Albar opposed my leading a mission to Africa. “Instead of making Malaysia known to the Africans, he would make himself known to the African countries,” he said in parliament on 3 January 1964. He wanted a Federation cabinet minister to head it. The Tunku replied that I had asked his permission to explain Malaysia to friends in that part of the world, and he thought it was better for the people from the new territories of the Federation to go on their own to inform the African states that they had joined it of their own free will. If the government was dissatisfied with the results of the mission, it could send another delegation, in which case he would include Albar in it. At the same time the Tunku also took a swipe at me for having answered a letter from Zhou Enlai, even though I had written my reply before merger. This, he said, was very wrong of me. It was very much the Tunku and his oblique style. I had to understand that in Malaysia such conduct was not acceptable. The Federation would have no truck with any communist country, least of all China.

The mission left Singapore in late January 1964 in a chartered four-engine turboprop aircraft, which gave us flexibility of movement. The mission included Sarawak’s chief minister, Stephen Kalong Ningkan (who joined us in Lagos in February), and his deputy, James Wong, Sabah state minister, Harris Salleh, and one of his MPs, and from Singapore, Devan Nair and my parliamentary secretary, Rahim Ishak. I wanted every major racial group to be represented – Malays, Chinese, Indians, Dayaks and Kadazans. We had two senior officials from the ministry of external affairs as secretaries, and a team of Malaysian reporters. We planned to visit 17 to 18 countries in some 35 days, and stayed in Cairo and
Alexandria while the arrangements were being made. This was not simple. Malaysia was not represented anywhere in Black Africa, so communications were slow and roundabout, through their London missions for Commonwealth countries, or their Cairo embassies, or UN delegations, and sometimes with help from the British foreign office. That had the disadvantage of making Malaysia appear a protégé of the British, but sometimes there was no choice. Only one country, Libya, refused to receive us.

Our first stop was Cairo. President Nasser had not changed his mind about Malaysia since I saw him in April 1962. Antara, the Indonesian news agency, had reported that the Malaysian ambassador to Cairo had been cold-shouldered by Nasser, who had refused to receive his credentials. The Egyptian foreign minister, Mahmood Fawzi, said there was no truth to this claim. Antara had also said that Egypt sympathised with Indonesia. (The Indonesians had craftily asked the Egyptian embassy in Kuala Lumpur to look after their interests when they withdrew their ambassador.) Fawzi said this was “without foundation”. These were blows for the Indonesians. Fawzi, over 70, was a cultivated man of considerable sophistication. He explained why Sukarno was against Malaysia and what he hoped to gain, that he needed an issue to keep his people preoccupied with external ambitions, and if he could break up Malaysia, it would only be a matter of time before Sabah and Sarawak would be absorbed into Indonesian Borneo.

Nasser was warm and friendly during a two-hour discussion, followed by dinner. In a joint communiqué, he stated that he had accepted an invitation to visit Malaysia. In other words, Egypt recognised Malaysia and did not consider it neo-colonialist.

In Tunisia, my next stop, President Habib Bourguiba, a very Frenchified Arab, unexpectedly took a strong anti-colonial line. The problem was that the Tunku, because of his mild personality and his moderate statements, was seen to resemble the typical African tribal chief who had
been nurtured by the colonial power and then given independence, and through whom the former rulers still retained their political influence and economic interests. Bourguiba, however, accepted that Malaysia, a country of 10 million with 10,000 troops, had the right to call for help when a nation of 100 million with 400,000 troops attacked it. I repeated this argument with good effect each time I met a leader who had reservations about Malaysia’s defence ties with Britain.

From Tunis we flew to Rabat, capital of Morocco. The king did not receive us, and his prime minister did not show much interest, making our talks inconsequential. He was not against Malaysia, and anyway the Moroccans were pro-Western, so there was no danger of their supporting Sukarno’s Indonesia.

Then to Algiers, which I had visited in July 1962 on my way home from the London Conference soon after the Algerians had won their independence from the French. Although I had flown in from Paris late that evening, Prime Minister Ben Bella had still given me dinner at 11 pm. This time he had probably been advised by his foreign ministry that the Tunku was not a revolutionary anti-colonialist, but he knew me as a nationalist and was friendly. With the help of Harris Salleh from Sabah and James Wong from Sarawak, I was able to persuade him that we had the right not to be swallowed up by Indonesia but to throw in our lot with the Malayans, with whom we shared a common British colonial past. James Wong and I were then called to an unscheduled second meeting with him. Ben Bella voiced the hope that peace would be reestablished, and said Algeria was willing to support any effort that would bring together Malaysia and Indonesia to resolve their differences amicably. This meeting produced a communiqué drafted by the Algerians that reflected none of the reservations they had earlier expressed in the United Nations Credentials Committee, and recorded that the visit of the Malaysian delegation augured well for the reinforcement of mutual understanding and friendship between the two countries.

My next stop was Bamako in Mali, an arid country, much of it desert. I was surprised to discover that Timbuktu was not a fictitious place. At the airport I was welcomed in the French style, first with a guard of honour, and then by a slim, dark-complexioned, half-Arab half-African girl in a Western dress who bussed me on both cheeks and presented me with a bouquet of flowers. President Modibo Keita received us in flowing Arab robes in his newly built palace, its high-ceilinged rooms opulently furnished and air-conditioned. An official communiqué issued from the presidential palace said that he reaffirmed Mali’s attachment to the principles of non-alignment, which were entirely opposed to the presence of foreign military bases, but added that those principles also demanded respect for the sovereignty of states. The communiqué then referred to an invitation to the Mali head of state to make an official visit to Malaysia and stated that he had given it a favourable reply. Like Ben Bella of Algeria, President Keita had signalled that his country was withdrawing its reservations about Malaysia.

As I flew south, I could see how the Arabs and the Africans had met and intermingled in the northern part of the Sahara, where many of the latter had converted to Islam. Black Africa was ethnically a completely different world with a totally different set of cultures.

Liberia was a scream. We arrived at the capital just before dusk. After the dry desert air of Bamako, Monrovia was warm and humid, not unlike Singapore. But Liberia was a parody of a state. An American-style guard of honour was drawn up at the airport, looking most unmilitary and anything but smart. A tall African greeted me in American-accented English and said he was the secretary of state. Most of their institutions were named or modelled after the Americans, but there the similarity ended. As I inspected the guard of honour, I heard the feeblest 18-gun salute ever, sounding like damp squibs.

While we waited in the VIP room for our bags to be unloaded, the secretary of state told us that we were going straight to President William
Tubman’s farm, where he was waiting to give us dinner. It was at least two hours away by car. I was appalled. We had been flying for three hours and needed to wash and freshen up. But there was no getting out of it. Off we went. We had seven military motorcycle outriders on huge Harley-Davidson twin-exhaust machines, and the walkie-talkies of the principal rider and the military aide-de-camp in the front seat of our Cadillac crackled ceaselessly. When one of the motorcycles skidded into a ditch, the secretary of state was not at all perturbed. In the course of the three-hour journey, two more bikes went off the road. Whether the riders were badly or slightly injured, nobody cared. I decided not to enquire; from the reactions of the secretary of state and the military ADC, these seemed commonplace happenings.