HARARE - Africa’s liberation struggle ideals have been hijacked by greedy elites who have turned against the people,  Information Communication Technology (ICT) minister Nelson Chamisa has said.

Delivering the third Samora Machel Memorial Lecture in Harare on Friday, Chamisa described the former Mozambican president as an African giant who loved his people.

“The tragedy of post-colonial Africa is a tragedy of lack of love,” Chamisa said.

He said Zimbabwe’s leaders are “sadly” involved in actions which Machel would have frowned at.

“We vanquished the white settler colonialists, but not colonialism. We kicked out Smith, yet kicking in and entrenching Smithism. Literally copying, pasting and perfecting the Rhodesian template of repression,” said Chamisa.

“Suddenly, we see false enemies, define fictitious saboteurs, behave like a leopard that accuses its young ones of smelling like goats to justify cannibalism and misguided infanticide,” Chamisa said.

He added that since independence, Zimbabwe has reproduced the very institutions that its sons and daughters had valiantly fought against.

“Our conduct continues to provide fuel to our naysayers, cynics and doomsayers. Remember Van der Byl, Desmond Ladner-Burke and Ken Flower, the Special Branch, the Law and Order Maintenance Act, the Selous Scouts, the colour bar policies? Juxtapose these with our own post-colonial realities,” he said.

“While Machel hosted our liberators who are we hosting; Mengistu?” queried Chamisa.

Former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam convicted in absentia of war crimes and human rights abuses by the Addis Ababa administration has been holed up in Harare for decades.

Former Mozambican president Samora Moisés Machel died in a mysterious plane crush On October 19, 1986 while coming back from an international meeting in Zambia.