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South China Morning Post

Singapore's pioneer of multi-racialism and Malay horror: the uncanny origins of Othman Wok

The First Fools: B-Sides of Lee Kuan Yew's A-Team is a new anthology about Singapore's founding leaders, spotlighting the unexpected private lives behind the political legends. This excerpt, written by Jaime Niam, reveals a little-known chapter in the life of Othman Wok – Singapore's first minister for social affairs and a key advocate for multi-racialism – whose early passion for ghost stories helped revive a struggling Malay-language magazine. Advertisement When Othman was five years old, he woke up one day with an abnormally bloated stomach. He had been sick for months, and only seemed to be getting worse. His family was growing increasingly worried. To them, there could only be one logical reason he had not gotten better: he 'kena sampuk' (got possessed). This was no job for the weak. Othman's family quickly brought in a line-up of traditional healers, or dukuns, in a bid to cure him. It worked, at first. But the ever-sickly child fell victim to an even more severe bout of illness just seven months later, once again requiring the services of a dukun, who doused him with holy water to ward off evil spirits. 'One good thing is that after these early sufferings, I was never ill, apart from the occasional headache or flu. I've never been admitted to the hospital,' Othman said in his biography. Advertisement In modern medicine, Othman would simply have been diagnosed with malaria. Some may even regard his childhood episodes with a tinge of scepticism.