Lee Kuan Yew managed to bring his country from a "third word to first world." He wrote about his experiences in his book From Third World to First." Many observers like to use his experience to critique African countries. Yew wrote briefly about his African tour of 1964 in his book. He visited seventeen capitals during his tour. He was in Dar es Salaam in February of 1964. Singapore had full internal self-government between 1959 and 1963. In September 1963, Singapore joined Malaya, Sarawak, and North Borneo in a union/federation that formed Malaysia. Singapore was a part of the troubled Federation when he did a tour of Africa in 1964. In the book, one gets a clear sense of the differences that faced African countries compared to Singapore. Singapore was expelled from the Federation in August 1965. The trouble back home, appears to have compelled Yew to try to establish closer links with Britain. Yew built strong relations with Britain. The relationship was important to Singapore's advancement. This relationship turned to a new chapter when Singapore was admitted to Commonwealth in 1965. Yew used the tension in Africa to give support to Britain over the claims and demands of African leaders. Commonwealth was the vehicle he used to achieve his objective. He did this with great skills.
Singapore joined Nigeria to call Commonwealth conference of Prime Ministers in Lagos, Nigeria January 1966 to discuss Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Yew met Sir Abubakar Balewa in 1964. Prime Minister Harold Wilson was not going to use force in Rhodesia. Yew took on a “broad philosophical approach.” (353) Alberta Margai of Sierra Leone had just spoken before him. Sir Margai said that only Africans should be concerned with the problem. Yew disagreed. Yew wrote “We were all interested parties and concerned. Singapore was closely associated with Britain in defense. If Britain were to be branded as a supporter of Ian Smith’s illegal seizure of power, my position would become more difficult.” (353) There you go: Yew was took a position which he presented as neutral; but in reality, he was siding with Britain over Africans on the question of Rhodesia to protect the defense interests of Singapore. Again, Yew disagreed with Milton Obote who said that Britain did not want to stop Ian Smith, that they wanted Smith to stay and consolidate his power. He writes “It was unhelpful to talk in terms of racist divisions between white settlers and immigrants. Like the peoples in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, I was a settler.” Yew was indeed a settler in Singapore! The problem of migration, he insists, had to be dealt with by accepting that “all men had equal rights.. For colored peoples of the world to demand retribution for past wrongs was not the answer to survival. In Africa, the nub of the problem was not Rhodesia but race relations in South Africa.” But the problems was that the white settlers in southern Africa did not want equality. This somehow escapes Yew's analysis. Britain wanted to buy time to secure its economic interests in South Africa and Rhodesia, and this Yew argues, was in the interest of both Africans and Europeans. Yew said that he “sympathized with Africans, but also saw the difficulties a British Prime Minister faced if he had to send British troops to quell a rebellion of British settlers..” Harold Wilson had to be careful at home with voters. Once again, Yew is pointing out that his views and interests were different from those of Africans. His sympathies lied with the settlers and the difficult conundrum that the British faced.
Yew writes that his attendance of January 1964 Lagos Commonwealth meeting “consolidated” his friendship with Harold Wilson. (354) Wilson congratulated Yew after the meeting. Wilson told Yew that he hoped he would attend other Commonwealth conferences. In other words, the British Prime Minister had a new friend, an ally at the Commonwealth meetings against the African bloc.
The next conference was in London in September 1966. Yew writes “In the two weeks there, I consolidated Singapore’s position with the British public and maintained my already good relations with Wilson and his key ministers, and with Conservative party leaders.” (357) The Rhodesia question dominated the September 1966 Commonwealth conference. In the 1971 Commonwealth conference, Yew recalls “friend” Nyerere who “pitched his argument on a high moral plane, that South Africa was out of the Commonwealth because its ideology was inconsistent with a multiracial Commonwealth. Despite Yew's overall praise of Nyerere, the sentence is condescending. The implication here is that morality takes second stage to other interests. This is perhaps one of the differences between Nyerere and Yew. Nyerere asked that Britain at the conference not to help South Africa and force Africans to react. The request is phrased in a way that gives Britain the final decision on how Africans would react: violently or peacefully. Nevertheless, Yew goes on to praise Nyerere; he writes that Nyerere “was the African leader I most respected. He struck me as honest and sincere.” (360) Despite his respect and admiration for Nyerere, Yew decided to take a position against the African bloc at the Commonwealth to secure his country’s links to Britain. The question of morality, what is right and what is wrong, was second to his desire to do what he felt would help his country of Singapore. Yew sees the situation of white minorities in southern Africa as a problem caused by migration, a problem that he faced in Singapore as an immigrant. Perhaps what one can add here is that he may indeed been a part of an oppressive settler group. He clearly sympathizes with fellow Europeans settlers who immigrated to southern Africa. Yew turns a blind eye to the realities and consequences of white racist policies in both South Africa and Rhodesia.
East Africa was being dragged into the Cold War. Zanzibar was at the center of tension between the East and West when Lee visited Tanganyika in February 1964. The situation on the ground was complex. Multiple foreign and local forces were pushing people and groups in different directions. There was an ideological clash between Pan Africanism and Pan Arabism in East Africa. This ideological gap was compounded by another major difference between African nationalist and Socialists revolutionaries. When Yew visited Tanganyika in February, the government had already made the decision to support the liberation struggle in southern Africa. Freedom fighters from Mozambique, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Namibia, were receiving military training in Kongwa, Dodoma. Tanganyika was in a war. The political and economic realities of Tanganyika, East Africa, Southern Africa, was very different from that of Singapore when Yew visited Dar es Salaam. Yew's position on Africa must, therefore, be seen from very different lenses. His views on Africa were not that much different from those of Europeans, the British, those who colonized Africa and refused to take any drastic measures to bring justice to southern Africa. Perhaps the fact that he was an immigrant to Singapore, an outsider himself, speaks volumes about the position he took on Africa. Yew's family originated in China. All this is not to deny that Singapore made great strives forward economically under his leadership; it did. Yet all the economic benefits that people in Singapore enjoy today has done little to ease racial and ethnic tension in that country. Ethnic Chinese are the dominant group; they make up over 76 percent of the population. Malays and Indians remain two groups of people that continue to face the wrath of discrimination to this day. The struggle is far from over!
