Free beer for many voters smoothed the way last week as the southern regions of the Sudan went to the polls. Arbitrarily assigned symbols to represent their candidacies because of the south's almost universal illiteracy, candidates beamed if they had drawn such favorable ones as an elephant or a cow, moaned if they had been assigned a picture of a bottle, which could offend Moslem teetotalers, or a disembodied human leg, which has connotations of cannibalism. In a few districts, no one was bold enough to present himself as a candidate; in almost all, dire threats were made against those...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
