Some of them did, it depends on the ideological orientation of the dictator or regime in question.

It is fairly accepted among Congo/Zaire scholars that Mobutu viewed his role and his governance in the style of the "traditional" chief. Michael Shatzberg argues in Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa; Father, Family, Food that Mobutu is emblematic of a whole leadership style he terms the Father-Chief. He also points to figures like Daniel Arap Moi if Kenya, Paul Biya of Cameroon, and Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire as figures who follow this archetype.

Schatzberg relates an anecdote where President Biya visited a drought impacted region of Cameroon in 1984 to give an address, and that there was a heavy downpour during the day of the scheduled speech. Party cadres at the speech credited Mr Biya with bringing the rain as relief to the beleaguered region. This draws obvious parallels with the notion that the institution of sacred chiefship (at least in some societies) gave the chief ability to control the rain in order to benefit his society.

Another example would be Hastings Banda of Malawi. In The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa Leroy Vail and Landeg White write about how Banda tied Maliawian national identity specifically to Chewa ethnic identity, and how he occasionally claimed that Yao and Nguni speakers were in fact Chewa people who had forgotten who they really were. The most convincing bit of evidence is that Hastings Banda emphasized the historical extent of the pre-colonial Maravi kingdom, stressing that it had ruled over territory in neighboring Zambia and northern Mozambique, territory that he should rule over. To me, that seems a clear indication that Banda viewed himself as a latter-day Maravi ruler.

One thing all of the leaders named above have in common is that they were all Western-aligned in the cold war.

There were of course also African regimes that proclaimed themselves to be Marxist-Leninist. For example the Derg of Ethiopia, the MPLA government of Angola, FRELIMO of Mozambique, the People's Republic of Benin, Peoples Republic of Congo. Political orthodoxy in these regimes strongly condemned "tribalism" or "national chauvinism" as forces that confuse and distract from class consciousness and the development of workers solidarity and hence socialism.

Now, that is not to say that ethnicity was totally banished from politics in these regimes. Fidel Castro famously complained to Erich Hoenicker about how Siad Barre was a national chauvinist and a bad socialist, and his pressing claims to somali-inhabited territory in the Ogaden region threatened the Ethiopian revolution, and put in doubt that a Marxist regime in Ethiopia could arise.

Anyway, Marxist-Leninist leaders could sometimes champion nationalist causes that frustrated the Cubans or Soviets, but they did not deploy the imagery of the Father-Chief or promote stories of miraculous rain at presidential speeches.

Finally, there is the third class of leaders like Ahmed Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda. Folks who strongly condemned colonialism, condemned the world economic order which siphoned wealth off of the continent and constrained political choices of African leaders. But, these leaders also did not subscribe fully to a Marxist-Leninist program.

Julius Nyerere famously proposed a system of collective economics, Ujaama, which has been called a philosophy of African socialism. In presenting his case for Ujaama, Nyerere asserted precedent in how "traditional" social relations and economics in East African villages operated prior to colonialism. Thus, in Nyerere's telling, Ujaama was the reformulation of "traditional" economics addressed to 20th century needs and at the national scale.

And outside of economics, the other major policy was umoja "unity", a process of emphasizing Tanzanian national identity over any particular regional, religious or ethnic identity. So, self conception of leadership as Chief is incompatible with this non-denominational nationalist effort.

Additionally, these leaders (Toure, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Kaunda) all governed in single-party systems, (just as Mobutu, Arap Moi, Houphouet-Boigny and Biya ruled one-party systems). These men all pointed to a "traditional" political culture of discussion and consensus as explanation. i.e. that policy disputes or local concerns could be discussed and addressed within party apparatus, and that turning these things into fodder for political contests would instead inflame community tensions. It's only circa 1990 that multiparty democracy comes in a wave to Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, and the falling Marxist-Leninist states.