Page 104 - Afrika Must Unite

THE ADMINISTRATIVE INSTRUMENT 89

them quite unfit and unreliable co-workers. We felt equally well
rid of those who were likely to resent taking orders from an
African. M y keenest anxiety was to avoid any dislocation of
government. We had at all costs to hold off any possibility of a
situation of instability which would enable Britain and other
colonial powers to point at us the finger of scorn and gloat over
the disastrous effects of handing over self-government ‘pre­
m aturely5 to Africans.
It was of prime importance to us, therefore, and the freedom
movements in other parts of Africa, that we should be able to
effect a smooth and gradual take-over of power, free from
serious administrative shocks. Therefore, we decided in favour
of maintaining the services of those British officials who were
civil servants in the best sense of the word, non-partisan in the
fulfilment of their duties and prepared to carry out orders given
by an African. It called for what I termed at the time ‘tactical
action5, but what an American friend jokingly suggested might
be more appropriately named ‘tactful5 action.
In countries like Britain, where the civil service does not
change with a change in the governing party, as it does, for
instance, in the United States, the administration is expected to
rem ain as loyal to the new government as it had been to the
ousted one. Here you get the insistence upon the fiction that civil
servants are non-political. This fiction, if carried to its logical
conclusion, would in fact deprive the civil servant of his basic
democratic right to vote. For in casting his vote, he exercises a
choice in favour of one political party and thereby demonstrates
a bias.
T hat his vote is secret does not alter the fact of selection. In
order to make a selection he must have his personal views,
whether private or openly expressed, upon the alternative pro­
grammes or objectives of the parties contending for power. As a
good civil servant, however, he is required, should the party
returned to power not be the one of his choice, nonetheless to
give it his absolute loyalty and unswerving integrity. This in
most instances he does, for he has been trained to understand
that it is only his patriotic duty to serve faithfully the existing
government of his country. It is in the rare, extreme cases, where
the servants of government find the pull between government