THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Afterword – Cries of a Tormented Soul 409
A heavy tinge of bitterness, therefore, colours much of Mustapha’s
memoirs. Politically isolated as left-wing, he and his KMM compatriots
were initially opposed to UMNO, but when all political channels were
closed with the outbreak of the communist insurgency in 1948, many of
them joined UMNO.
In what seems like a remarkable political comeback in 1951, his name
resurfaced in the crisis-ridden UMNO General Assembly after Datuk Onn
Jaafar had resigned as president on the grounds of the party’s refusal to
open its doors to non-Malays.
Mustapha’s standing was so strong that he was nominated to stand
against Tunku Abdul Rahman and Datuk (later Tun) Abdul Razak for the
posts of UMNO president and deputy president respectively. But he lost
by one vote each time to both these rivals.
These were contests he had entered to please his old left-wing compatriots
who were keen to capture UMNO and as a result his energies
were almost spent. Even had he won, Mustapha would not have lasted
long at his post, given his state of health.
These memoirs make enthralling reading and were dutifully compiled
and completed by his daughter Insun after his death on 15 January 1987.
Throughout the memoirs, Mustapha’s voice cries out incessantly for
justice and for recognition as a Malay nationalist.
In 1974, he had narrated his political struggles to a predominantly
student audience at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University
of Malaysia), then in Kuala Lumpur. The encounter was an emotional
experience for both Mustapha and the audience.
“I cried along with them as memories of my bitter and gruelling
experiences came flooding back,” he recalls. “Involved in World War II
as a Malay Fifth Columnist leader, detained in several (British) Police
lock-ups and prisons, taunted and jeered by Malays who saw me hawking
food on the roadside, humiliated by people who slammed their doors in
my face, asked to leave my rented cubicle in the middle of the night and
even labelled as the Malay who ‘brought’ the Japanese into Malaya, I
left them with a tremendous sense of mental and emotional fulfilment. I
had sown in these educated young souls the urge to struggle for justice.”
In writing these memoirs, Mustapha was clearly able to release and
assuage the cries of his own tormented soul for justice and recognition.