Africa faced with a serious deficit of leaders - Prof J Moyo

ZANU-PF Politburo member Professor Jonathan Moyo on Wednesday said Africa was facing a serious deficit of leaders with true African values.

He slammed the new crop of Africa leadership saying it was only concerned about money and being used as pawns by western powers.

Addressing officers undergoing a peace support operation training at 5 Brigade here yesterday, Prof Moyo said the new crop of African youths were better than the majority of these leaders in terms of vision.

"Africa now have serious deficit of true leaders. Majority of our African leaders are not fit for purpose, we no longer have those luminaries of yesteryear," said Prof Moyo.

"Their minds, values, ethos and goals are shameful, they do not even represent our great continent."

Prof Moyo said Africa would forever miss the vibrant crop of the likes of Comrades Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta.

"Whenever they went to international forums they spoke highly of Africa and represented it highly.

"Many African leaders with exception of our own President Mugabe and a few principled ones left now lack respect in international community.

"They are invited and kept far away from deliberations for example at G20 summit, they are guarded by security far from the summit and after the westerners finish deliberations they are then called and asked what do you want us to do for you and they say we need lines of credit, we have so and so challenges we need your help, just imagine.

"They will be literally holding begging bowls, they do not represent interests of Africa. Many are now being used as point man by westerners. This is a new crop of shameful leaders we now have in Africa," he said. The young people, he said, were lacking vision from leadership.

"In 2000 in Zimbabwe we saw an excluded majority with no vision and had a crop of new leadership which have no purpose. The birth of resource nationalism in Zimbabwe is making the youths want to associate and identify themselves with our leader President Mugabe, youths driven by nationalism like Julius Malema are clear on where they are going even without education, they have clear visions.

"Even our elders the likes of Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi never went to school but they had vision of where they wanted to go. Malema is just amazing, he is above many African leaders and they end up panicking when they hear him speak.

"To those who are not on social media or have knowledge of such if you want to know the thoughts of African youths listen to Malema and you would have heard 70 percent of the African youths speaking," he added.

Zimbabwe, said Prof Moyo, was not a rogue state as stated by other hostile countries.

"This is evidenced by its continued participation in international missions where its defence and security officers are excelling.

"African Union lacks coherent ideology, lack understanding of who we are as a people, during the decolonisation period it was easy to see how African we were.

"We no longer have a clear common African objective and those countries which appear to have direction like Zimbabwe are labelled or appear odd," he said.

Prof Moyo said Africans were now the cutting edge in terms of ICT but their political leaders were failing them.