6. Introduction
6.1 The Public Service Ethics
6.1.4 Ethical Dilemmas
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There are certain things that are expected from a civil servant by the general public.
These expectations are discussed under the following sub-heading.
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is, therefore, of fundamental importance that civil servants should act justly and fairly to one and all, not only paying lip-service to justness and fairness, but ensuring that these are manifestly and undoubtedly seen to be done. It is imperative that each civil servant, upon taken the oath of office, takes cognisance of the fact that he or she has a special duty to be fair and impartial in his or her dealings with members of society. Personal self-interest should in all circumstances be subordinate to the public good, especially if circumstances arise where the possibility of a conflict of interest may become an ethical dilemma (Hanekom, 1987: 151).
The need that civil servants live in consonance with these regulations from codes of conducts and expectation from the people could and do give rise to some ethical dilemma. Some of the most common of these dilemmas with which civil servants are confronted are as follows: administrative discretion, administrative secrecy and public accountability. We will look at this briefly.
Administrative discretion
Civil servants have many duties to perform. They are not only to execute public policy. They also make decisions pertaining to the lives of people; for instance, about taxes, survival, and the removal of people. Thus, in this way, they exercise discretion. This is to say that, the promotion of the common good depends to a large extent on the use or abuse of administrative discretion (Rohr 1978: 399).
Administrative secrecy
It can be stated that official information is usually regarded as something that is risky and therefore be held in confidence. This is because such information may cause problems to society. For David Menyah official information is often of such a sensitive nature (for example, pending tax increases, rezoning of land, retrenchment of staff) that leakage of the information can lead to demonstrations, corrupt practices or, for some individuals, illegal monetary gains. Therefore, leaking official information to the public is a violation of procedural prescriptions and can
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be an ethical dilemma (Menyah, 2010: 6). Any code of public conduct would demand some level of competence in handling matters of this nature by civil servants
Public accountability
The issue of public accountability can also be an ethical dilemma. According to Menyah since civil servants are the implementers of public policies, they ought to be accountable for their official actions to their superiors, the courts and the public.
It is, nevertheless, possible for them to hide behind prescribed procedures, the cloak of professionalism and even political office-bearers (Menyah, 2010: 6).
There are other problem areas from which ethical dilemmas may occur apart from the areas of possible conflict as mentioned above, such as:
The political activity of civil servants resulting in divided loyalty on the part of those officials who sympathise with the views of a specific political party.
The weaning away of civilservants from adhering to higher ethical standards and making decisions on considerations not really salient to the case they are dealing with (Hanekom, 1987: 159).
By and large, ethical dilemma refers to a situation where there is a conflict of interests or where there are two or many courses of action open for a civil servants but the law is not specific on what should be done in such situation. It is a dilemma because a civil servants facing such situation knows that whatever action he takes will likely produce undesirably results, nevertheless, the situation is such that he cannot avoid taking action altogether. A code of conduct certainly envisages such situations and this is the reason why civil servants are disciplined and responsible person.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that the potential areas for conflict mentioned earlier are not necessarily ethical dilemmas in themselves. It is what the civil
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servants do if challenged by activities pertaining to these phenomena that could prove to be the ethical dilemma:
Must he or she keep quiet if administrative discretion is abused, or that corruption and nepotism are practiced?
Or must he or she „blow the whistle‟?
In a situation like the above, what must the civil servant do? Most of the ethical challenges faced by civil servants stem from the way in which the official conceives the interest of the public and not necessarily from his or her conception of good and evil, or right or wrong (Hanekom, 1987: 160).
The rules and requirements we have outlined above, beginning from the code of conduct to this point are the ideal for every society. It is general believed that corruption will be drastically reduced where these rules exist. Surprisingly theses rules exist in almost all the states in Africa. The question then is, why corruption is still ravaging the continent of Africa inspite of the fact that these rules are in existence? The obvious answer to this question would be, because they are not implemented. The next question then becomes, why are they not implemented? In the next section we shall use some scholar to argue that these rules are not implemented or are not working in African because the logics behind them are couched in western ethical principles and therefore alien to Africa and Africans.
6.2 Critical Review and Interpretation of Corruption in an African