On National Values, Public Morals and the Civil Service
When new nations are born, important decisions must be made, and critical political and economic systems must be chosen. At the height of the cold war, when new African nations were born, the choice was between capitalism and communism. These decisions were made, and the fates of most countries were sealed. However, while these political and economic decisions are essential, of equal significance, yet often underestimated, is the choice of a national character. The national character entails the values that the new nation will adopt. It comprises ethical and moral values the ruling class deems necessary for nation-making. For most African countries, and for Kenya to be particular, a national character is non-existent simply because the choice was never made when the nation was in its infancy.
The values that citizens hold are especially important if a nation is to maintain long-term viability. After the War of Independence, the United States, like every other nation, was torn on what it needed to become. A choice had to be made whether the United States would continue as a replica of the British monarchy or chart a new path. Coming from a protracted war with the crown, the US chose to become a republic, drew out a written constitution, and forged its way to prosperity through a spirited debate over the power of the state and the people.
Rarely discussed is that the new nation had to pick a national character. Republicanism was more than a system of governance and had within it a moral code. One of the Founding Fathers, George Washington, believed in a moral philosophy of Republicanism, which was inherently virtuous. We know this because Washington would have chosen to overstay his presidency. Yet as a man of virtue, he stepped down an action that saved the new nation. His actions are immortalized through the Motto of the Society of Cincinnati, which he founded; Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam (“He relinquished everything to save the Republic”).
As Republicanism swept through the new nation, so did its values. Its tenets were adhered to by everyone, including those of the Patrician classes and the low-class yeomen. Benjamin Franklin, a significant figure of the American elite, helped guide what constituted republican virtues. In 1780, he listed thirteen virtues for character development that he believed Americans needed to follow. The image below shows what the virtues were and what they entailed.
Virtue is essential, but inculcating it in a Republic is no easy task. National values have to be carefully chosen, especially by the bourgeois, since it’s from them that virtue is birthed and propagated. If a country’s elite classes aren’t virtuous, then it’s unlikely that the citizenry will. Through their aspirations, the lower classes model their behaviours to imitate the upper classes. It’s for this reason that I believe paper virtues mean nothing. The Kenyan Constitution has what it considers the republic’s values and applies to everyone in the civil service. They include such values as patriotism, national unity, sharing, rule of law, democracy, human dignity, equality, social justice, inclusiveness, equity, integrity, transparency, and accountability.
These values are empty, partly because they lack depth of character. They dictate worth with little reference to the virtues and morals of public officers. It is, therefore, no coincidence that these values are never followed since they are only on paper and not in people’s hearts. For them to be followed, they need to be translated into statements of virtue and character emphasizing moral duty. More importantly, these values must be widely held by the ruling and middle classes. I reference the English Gentleman to paint the picture of the virtuous citizen.
The Gentlemen of England and China
The British Gentleman is a prominent figure. At his core was a good upbringing, preferably middle-class or upper-middle class, a good education, and in some cases, nobility. Marcus Collins, in The Fall of the English Gentleman, however, notes that “birth and breeding were mere preconditions” for a gentleman. At the core of it, “the gentleman adhered to a code of conduct that enabled his every action and established his right to rule.” He further describes gentlemen as amateurs but not in the usual sense, arguing that “amateurism afforded gentlemen disinterestedness, an easygoing generosity, and a horror of the small-minded and the mean-spirited.” Gentlemanliness, he continues, “entailed a preference for ‘character’ over ‘brains,’ a disdain for materialism and anti-work ethic opposed to the more ruthless and competitive aspects of professionalism.”
The gentleman’s character emerges more clearly in his preference for sport and the virtues he emphasizes during play. Collins observes that the “true Englishman brought to sport the finest gentlemanly qualities of amateurism, justice, tolerance and respect for the underdog, moderation, and self-discipline.” Furthermore, the “gentleman was also a model of self-control, trained in self-repression, reticence, and restraint.” The gentleman was, therefore, first and foremost, a moral man.
There are parallels between the virtues espoused by the Englishman and those of American Republicanism. Benjamin Franklin advocated an ethos that would see to it that the American in the new nation would be a moral man. It is this morality that allows for ease in national building. However, since Americans charted a different path from the Englishman, the gentleman, too, wasn’t perfectly replicated in the new nation. In fact, Collins observes that the gentleman was sangfroid compared to American ‘obstreperousness.’ The gentleman’s “reserve oiled the wheels of etiquette, prevented any unseemly ‘wailing and whining…explosions of temper, and…rhetoric’ and prevented the Englishman from a tendency to dissipate his strength in the manner of an interperate and garrulous American.”
Gentleman character isn’t, however, a preserve of the Englishman. The Chinese, too, had an ethos of virtue closely aligned with the British. Rupert Wilkinson highlights the gentlemanly features of Chinese leadership and culture and observes that in China, gentlemanliness was quite prominent, and gentlemen would possess a particular “posture of ease” similar to that of the British. This posture would ultimately determine who was fit to rule and was heavily tested in public service examinations. In China, therefore, the gentleman ideal was “defended by families who possessed or wanted to possess landed wealth; and it supported a moral premium on moderation, self-restraint, and social harmony.
Worth noting is that the gentleman, while for the better part a member of the gentry, the landless, and those of the low classes, could still become gentlemen if they put in the work and adopted the gentleman ideal. This distinction is essential for governance and leadership since, as we shall see, becoming a civil servant in China and Britain required a firm adherence to virtue and a gentlemanly status that was open to anyone. In fact, in Britain, the gentleman wasn’t noble and often fell below the knights, baronets, and esquires. The adoption of virtue by the citizenry, therefore, shouldn’t be seen as a preserve of a few.
Rupert Wilkinson highlights two features of the gentleman, essential to understanding how virtue and public service mesh. First is classical learning, which was quite prominent before the modern world. Both China and Britain, she argues, “made familiarity with a classical body of knowledge a matter of aesthetic, as well as moral advantage.” To wit, classical knowledge gave individuals in these two countries a moral advantage. It made them eligible for public service, where higher morality placed one above other applicants.
The second feature is leisure, whereby in England, “the gentlemanly figure did not have to work too exclusively or too obviously for a living; he had leisure and means both to pursue culture and to seek relatively unremunerative public office.” Kenyans reading this will quickly realize that public service in our country is where people either go to work hoping to gain a fortune or get rich through corrupt means. English gentlemen, however, show us that public service is merely leisure. In China, this leisureliness is interpreted as a “do-nothing” policy or what Wilkinson calls “elegant inaction.”
Inaction would be important for a country like Kenya, where the government makes things worse every time it intervenes on an issue. Furthermore, the Kenyan Civil servant’s desire “to be seen working” creates wastage, redundancy, and overregulation. I am ready to bet the country would be better off if most people in government just sat and did nothing. We would have fewer laws, less regulation, more freedom, and a thriving private sector that caters to everyone’s needs. Most importantly, we would have a civil service appointed not for its professionalism or what it does but rather for what it represents. The civil service would represent a higher ideal, an ethic to be emulated, and unquestionable morality. As Wilkinson opines, the civil service and ruling elite, comprised of gentlemen, would have the legitimacy of its citizens as a “moral elect.”
There’s reason to believe this would be the case, for on a personal level, the Chinese gentleman paid attention to “gracefulness, formal dignity, and etiquette.” Furthermore, true to Confucianism, the Chinese gentleman valued harmony. Harmony meant being gentle and the “curbing of base and selfish passions.” A vice, like corruption, exists in Kenya because civil servants and the citizens do not have a moral compass that dissuades them from indulging in selfish passions. The constitution lists values like integrity, transparency, and accountability but doesn’t place moral anchors to ensure these values are adhered to. For this reason, corruption remains illegal in Kenya despite not being a moral flaw to the corrupt.
In the official realm, other than “doing nothing,” Chinese gentlemen uphold the idea that duty and privilege go hand in hand. The classic “noblesse oblige” should come to mind as a public service ethos. Since the gentleman status was a badge of honour, it also came with a duty to the public. For those being educated to become gentlemen in Britain, Wilkinson states that “gentlemanly education had to see that the student perceived self-interest largely in terms of moral prestige and that he identified himself closely with the public service elite. It had to make him see privilege and duty as two faces of the same thing.”
In Kenya, duty and privilege are entirely divorced, and those who are given the privilege of governance are the most irresponsible. Like virtue, duty isn’t words on a paper or a job description. Duty is a commitment to a higher ideal and to those who have entrusted one with privilege. In China, Confucian education observes that such a man of honour should “subordinate himself to the community, be it the family, or the nation, whose historic continuity denoted a group’s immortality.”
Moral Bankruptcy and Low Trust Societies
The lack of values and morals that guide a population will typically result in a nation without a discernible code of conduct. Morals are a higher ideal that distracts from the self-interest of the individual. Remember, people will do anything to appease their interests and those of their kin. However, since the nation oversees scarce resources, the lack of a unifying authority in terms of a moral code means the result would be the tragedy of the commons.
Low-trust societies are what you get when people look at the world from a utilitarian perspective. From this perspective, people seek only that which stands to benefit them. There is no higher authority that people serve other than their interests. The United States was a product of the Enlightenment, which cherished higher ideals like reason, happiness, and freedom. In England, the gentleman was itself, according to Marcus Collins, descended “from medieval chivalry, which imbued it with a strong religious tone.” In China, Confucianism emphasizes higher values such as family, social order, and general harmony. It is easy to see how a higher moral authority prevents a nation from cannibalizing itself.
David Ndii writes of corruption in Kenya, citing Peter Ekeh and his theory of two publics. He argues that unlike the West, where private morals are also public morals, in Kenya and the rest of Africa, private morals do not extend to the public. This theory partly validates my observation that the lack of a national ethos acts as a go-ahead for civil servants and elected officials “to get in and eat.” However, the low-trust nature of African society does not align properly with Ekeh’s theory that we are moral in private. In fact, this lack of personal morals extends to the public. We have gods that we believe in, but the sense of duty to act and behave properly is entirely lacking. If we have no duty to serve the will of God, what of the state?
Others, like Ndii, would argue that corruption is primarily a colonial legacy. But as discussed in the opening paragraphs, each new nation had a choice. The nation’s birth required leaders to pick a viable political and economic system. Even more important was for each government to decide what values it needed to teach its citizens. Like the gentleman who needed a classical education, the modern state has a robust educational infrastructure that, if properly deployed, would serve as an efficient channel of moral socialization.
It is, therefore, not enough for values to be written in constitutions or to accompany the mission and vision of an organization. A nation’s values should be evident in the public conduct of its leaders and civil servants and the private lives of its citizens. Trust should naturally arise from the gentleness of people’s interactions. There should be harmony in the two publics, and a higher morality should govern the realms of man, a higher standard of ethics that goes beyond self-interest. The gentleman was a symbol of what it meant to be English. We now have to ask ourselves what it means to be Kenyan.
