another dog who bark but never serve NS

AT THE beginning of the 20th century, a young Dzafir Abdul Karim left his family on Bawean Island, north of Java, in search of work in Singapore.

He found work driving a steamroller to flatten roads under construction.

At night, he made traditional herbs, practised blood cupping - a traditional healing method akin to acupuncture - circumcised Malay children and taught them to read the Quran to supplement his meagre wages.

He did not speak much about his migration here to his eight children - three others died when they were young - but Mr Dzafir's hard work and ambition rubbed off on them, his son Ridzwan Dzafir, 82, recalls.

'He was conscious of the fact that he was a migrant, and had to work harder than locals,' Mr Ridzwan, a former top civil servant, tells Insight.

'That probably led to his doing more than one thing, and we acquired his enterprising and hard-working streak.'

At a time when few Malay boys made it to English schools, Mr Dzafir and his wife Rugayah made sure their sons worked doubly hard to make the grade.

Madam Rugayah was born here. Her father, Haji Khodri, had moved here from Madura, an island off East Java, and became a businessman who manufactured Malay herbal medicine and was a respected religious leader. Her mother, Hajah Halimah, was from Sulawesi.

Many such immigrants came from various parts of the Malay Archipelago to Singapore, but their origins mattered less as they formed a Malay identity based on a shared language and faith.

Once they settled down and formed a family here, Mr Ridzwan's parents called Singapore home. They moved to bigger homes, and eventually to a bungalow in Lorong 33 Geylang, where their children made friends with people from other communities.

Eldest son Jamil joined the civil service in the 1930s and rose to become assistant secretary, second son Razak built low-cost kampung houses in Jalan Eunos, third son Karim was a chemist with Shell and later a unionist, fourth son Ahmad joined the education service, and sixth son Khalil was a Straits Steamship Company officer.

Their two sisters, however, did not receive much education, as was common among many families at the time.

Mr Ridzwan, the fifth son, who studied in Geylang Malay School, Telok Kurau English School and Raffles Institution, won a scholarship to Raffles College, the precursor to the University of Malaya, in 1948.

But he failed one subject in his first year, and had to repeat the entire year.

Mr Ridzwan says he was devastated, as losing his scholarship also meant losing his spot in the university hostel.

Fortunately, he managed to get financial help from his dean, and resolved to complete his degree, even if it meant staying up past midnight and squatting in friends' rooms. He passed and was offered the chance to obtain honours, but turned it down to find work.

In 1952, he joined the Customs service, and nine years later, was absorbed into the elite Administrative Service.

In 1956, he married Madam Mushrifah Abdul Aziz, a widowed typist and mother of two at the Civil Defence Force, where he volunteered. They have three children of their own.

Mr Ridzwan went on to set up Singapore's diplomatic missions in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta after independence, and worked on trade matters and negotiations, rising to be director-general of the Trade Development Board, the predecessor of International Enterprise Singapore.

On top of his hectic schedule, he also served as president of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore and chief executive of community self-help group Mendaki.

He notes wistfully that the Malay community can do much more to narrow the gap with other races in areas like education and skills, and feels a mindset change is needed.

'We must be more ambitious, more competitive, just like our forefathers who were migrants,' he says.