You have all the rights to have your opinion.
To me, Zitto has the qualities needed plus. Personality matters a lot in a public figure, if you never knew, keep it in mind, you will learn about it sooner or later and you will remember this post. Principles indeed are first and foremost, policies must be adhered to, he is in the game for quite sometime now to learn the trade.
Again you exhibit a persisting untoward blindness. In no way and at no time did I dismiss personality (which can be argued to be lacking on the part of your idol) as a non entity, many a brilliant technocrats - take Warioba- failed in politics simply due to lack of personality. Many a charlatan, take Eva Peron as an example, flourished with empty personalities. I may not know much, but I am at the very least enough of a student of history to understand that.
What I am dismissing here, is this quaint, thinly disguised cult of personality that puts a person above principles and policies, in effect giving a dangerous license on the part of the idolized legend, to the extent of openly suspending the analysis of the policies and principles he stands for on the basis that "policies can be rectified later".
This notion, which is totally dependent on the benevolence of the idol - a benevolence prone to change, especially because the idol himself prides himself in his unpredictability and exposed his immaturity by stating that openly here- is dangerous indeed because it is a pandora box that ignores the Lord Acton adage "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".
The problem of politics in the South is that people are looking for messiahs, heroes, quick fixes, silver bullets etc.
Our problems are bigger than any one person is capable of solving, the solutions need to be consummate. As good as Zitto may be, this wishful thinking that he could be entrusted with the welfare of a country in an unfettered manner at the personal level is dangerous. We tried this with Nyerere already, it did not work even when Nyerere was more benevolent, seasoned, smarter and humbler than Zitto, at a time when there was practically no challenge. This is part of the reason we have all these problems with our Union right now, almost everybody was revolving around the Nyerere cult of personality.And to Nyerere's credit, even when he was entertaining curbing his wings, the Kawawas of his world were vehemently against doing so citing unnecessary democratic complications that rings similar to your call of "policies can be rectified later". How unfortunate.
What makes you think we will find answers to our complex questions in a personality cult?