Chief Chipepo has risen hairs on live ZNBC Morning Live programme, “Leadership in Africa”, much to the amusement of Morning Live anchors this morning, who only had to quickly cut the chief’s interview. The chief has said what would not normally be allowed to be aired on ZNBC, it is a rare discourse on public broadcaster, ZNBC.
“When you have poor leadership, people will be poor. No foreigner will ever develop a country. There is no country which develops out of foreigners. Make your local people rich, the strength should be with the local community, not foreigners. Most leaders want to become rich. They come into power to want to be rich, they think they are also chiefs, the wamuyayaya, no, they are 5 year leaders, not chiefs. They think they are chiefs. We don’t need recycled leadership, where old people want to be ministers, ambassadors… KK was 45years when he became President. Old people had their turn. Current leaders don’t want to make use of youths, train young people. Moses trained Joshua. Most of these people in leadership in Africa, Zambia included, are thieves, the first thing they want to do is build a house out of stolen public funds to develop yourself, you are cursing yourself. They are the majority in Africa. Most of these leaders in Africa, God is not happy with them,” said Chief Chipepo, concluding, “Come 2016, we will tell our people not to vote for bad leaders if they continue like this.”
A UNZA political lecturer, Mr Zimba, says Africa has weak institutions and that’s the difference between Europe, USA and Africa. Africa has a constituency of majority poor people and illiterate, you have citizens who can be manipulated by selfish leaders. A lot of traditional leaders are commanding a lot of influence. Why are African citizens not asking their traditional leaders selling huge chunks of land to Chinese and foreigners, but their subjects follow them?. A good number of Africans are manipulable because they are poor, docile and illiterate. African leaders need to be checked, but it will take Africans to check them. An illiterate, docile, poor citizen can’t perform that role. The Church, the civil society need to come in. Its a challenge… it’s very easy to lead Africans to behave in a right or wrong way because they are manipulable. Poor and bad leadership, be it political or traditional or charismatic leadership”, Zimba says.