Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern Singapore, has moved on. Tributes have poured in thick and fast, from all over the world.

Nothing surprising; after all, Singapore has long been a case study in the pursuit and achievement of rapid social and economic change in circumstances seemingly pre-ordained to guarantee failure.

Still, what was surprising was the praise from the leaders of the world’s liberal democracies, notable for their tireless efforts to export their societies’ brand of politics and ways of being.

Why was Mr Lee who spent his entire life promoting the authoritarian politics they seek to overturn and “illiberal values” they seek to undermine, now the subject of effusive praise from them, given their governments spend billions of dollars trying to shape the world in the image of their own societies?

It is tempting to conclude that here was another example of Western hypocrisy. It seems, however, as if through sheer will power, intellectual consistency and the results he achieved, Lee managed to get the West’s leaders to accept that their values and ways of being were not a template to be applied willy-nilly everywhere, but merely an option, aspects of which, depending on context, could be borrowed wholesale, modified, and even rejected.

Independent Singapore started life as a poor trading outpost of imperial Britain. It had no natural resources, was lacking in food, and had little fresh water of its own.

After a few moments of head scratching, I could not identify an African country that would have been so disadvantaged, impoverished, and vulnerable at Independence. Anyone who cares to know does not have to be told what today’s Singapore is like. And no African who has not slept through the past 50 years of Independence needs to be told what most of Africa is like.

The progress Singapore has made, it seems to me, enjoins Africans, especially those in historically badly governed countries where disease, ignorance and hunger are still rampant, to ask what lessons Singapore can offer them.

It makes no sense to argue that the Singapore model can be or should be borrowed wholesale by African countries. No country in Africa is exactly like Singapore, and so any borrowing must be approached carefully.

There are, however, things Singapore did under Lee’s leadership that strike one as worth aspiring to and also possible, even though they are not necessarily easy to do, in any context. He, we are told, instituted a system of meritocratic, clean, self-reliant and efficient government and civil service.

We can debate what self-reliance in this case meant and what it should mean in aid-dependent Africa. However, the rest are self-explanatory, and hardly the stuff a government needs vast amounts of money to do.

Lee thought deeply about his society and its peculiarities. That led him to decide and hold out against the spread of Western-style individualism and what he believed was the exaggerated importance of individual liberties, choosing instead to subordinate them to the collective interests of Singaporean society.

Thus the limitations he set on behaviour that was likely to be disruptive, especially to the goal of cultivating and nurturing harmonious inter-ethnic relations, without treating ethnicity or ethnic feeling as if they were necessarily bad things.

He then prioritised “Asian values” over so-called universal values, insisting on discipline and hard work, both key contributors to the political and social stability that allowed for fast-paced economic and social change. He knew his mind and considered his own ideas about society and leadership as valid within the context.

In Africa, the tendency is to embrace every new fangled idea with enthusiasm, usually without thinking much about it. Rarely does one hear the questions: “Is it fit for purpose?” “Will it work for us?” And so today one hears, to mention a few well-rehearsed slogans, of “good governance” today, the next day, “The state has no business doing business”, and then “We should roll back the state.” Under Lee, Singapore was no country for intellectual parrots in the same way that many of our countries have become.

In one of the numerous media interviews in which he reflected on his role and admitted that he had made many mistakes, Lee said that his job had been to find his successors.

The search as we all know, took a whole 31 years. And when he finally let go, Singapore did not fall apart. Outsiders played no role. As the period following his retirement has shown, his successors were ready to fill his shoes and have acquitted themselves well, even in the face of new and inevitable challenges.

After a long period at the helm during which critics attacked him mercilessly for his authoritarianism, Singapore is, it seems, on the way to becoming a liberal democracy with frequent changes in leadership.

Former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger may as well have been right when he argued that, had Lee chosen the road of his critics, Singapore would have collapsed. Singaporeans must be happy he chose his and their path and kept going.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]