NAMIBIA: Desert Mirage

Pretoria's empty victory

It certainly looked like an authentic election campaign in an emerging African nation. Buses adorned with blue and white balloons labored up and down the main street of Windhoek, the sun-swept territorial capital, loudspeakers blaring "Vote! Vote! Vote!" Mobile polls were transported to practically every village in Namibia, the resource-rich, population-poor (about 1 million) stretch of desert known as South West Africa that South Africa's white regime has ruled as a protectorate since 1920. Yet the result, reports TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief...

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