John Francis Fernandez was one of those heroes on par with Rosa Parks of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Much as Rosa Park's refusal to give up her bus seat in deference to a White passenger heralded the Civil Rights movement, Fernandez' little known and equally uncelebrated actions challenged the inherent racial inequity prevalent in Uganda's colonial Civil Services. He was a Mangalorean but I'm willing to appropriate this unlikely hero for us Goans, for his courage challenged commonly held notions about race and the competency of the predominantly Goan Civil Servants in British East Africa.

John was one of those adventurers that set out to discover life on the plains of East Africa, arriving in Uganda in 1901 to work for the Railways as a clerk, later taking up positions in various other parts of East Africa. In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, he leaves behind a haunting image of Africa in those early days of life for those clerks, most of whom were Goan, posted to remote areas such as Kisumu and the Northern Frontier District, where neither man nor beast could escape the swarms of mosquito and tsetse flies. Of Kisumu in Kenya, he recalls: "evening meals eaten sitting cross-legged on my bed in order not only to prevent mosquito bites but to prevent the myriads of lake flies getting into my plate of soup." Fernandez' illustrious career continued unfazed, joining Sir Arthur Geoffrey on his expedition into Marsabit and assisting him greatly in the triangulation of the Northern Frontier District. Geoffrey Archer went on to become Governor of Somaliland and then Uganda in 1922, while John was decorated with the General Services Medal and the Nandi Clasp, but his position continued to be that of Book-keeper.

Towards the end of his service in 1932, he took up cudgels on his own behalf and challenged the notion that tacitly upheld racial inequality within the Uganda Civil Services. Among other things he wanted his designation to be changed from Book-keeper to that of Accountant and the adjective "Asiatic" which qualified his position, to be dropped, for he felt strongly that in Uganda it had the "same significance as nigger". The mettle of the man can be seen when in an interview with Sir George Tomlinson, Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Colonial Office, he refused a medal of honour which he was offered instead of the requested promotion, saying he had asked for bread and they were giving him metal. The composite, organic and often conflicting nature not just of colonial Africa but of human societies is played out in the unfolding drama of this case, where on the one hand were men determined to uphold an inequitable status quo and other men stoked by their conscience wanted to move the moral zeitgeist of the times ahead.

It would be incorrect of me to portray this story as the villainous pitted against the virtuous, but rather of players trapped within the limitation of Empire. Fernandez was an outstanding employee and because of his stellar performance, he had garnered the support of people in powerful positions, without which his case would not have lingered in the upper echelons of power to be debated for two long years before being rejected. Amidst allegations of blatant racism and counter justifications of just following due process, Sir Bernard Bourdillon, Governor of Uganda, denied that Asians were withheld from promotion merely because of their race and insisted that the: "the Asiatic branch of service have not displayed the capacity, nor submitted applications, for such advancement" and that the "Asiatic staff has not been able to produce men of sufficiently outstanding qualifications."

It would take another twenty-five years and the Lidbury Commission, headed by Sir David Lidbury to finally acknowledge the racial barriers that existed in the British Civil Services of East Africa and to strip these away layer by layer. Once this was done, Alvaro Collaco rose to the position of Acting Head of the Budget Department, Ministry of Finance. Ferdinand Rodrigues in 1972 became Under Secretary, President's Office as well as decorated as Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. Armando Rodrigues, who had started out as a clerk in 1947 became the C.E.O of the Uganda government's largest Ministry. Life had indeed come full circle. John Francis Fernandez had fought so valiantly just for the designation of Accountant and lost on the premise that an Asian could not fill such a position, but when the racial ceiling on upward mobility finally came crashing down, the Goan spirit and intellect soared to heights, which colonial eyes could never have perceived

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