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- <text id=89TT3053>
- <link 89TT3117>
- <title>
- Nov. 20, 1989: World Notes:Namibia
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Nov. 20, 1989 Freedom!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 53
- World Notes
- NAMIBIA
- Patience and Clenched Fists
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Mile-long lines of patient first-time voters snaked toward
- polling booths under a broiling sun last week as Namibia held
- United Nations-supervised elections that will lead the territory
- to independence after 74 years of South African control. So
- great was the enthusiasm that more than 90% of the country's
- 701,000 eligible voters cast ballots.
- </p>
- <p> The leftist SWAPO Party, which led a guerilla war against
- South Africa for 23 years, is expected to win a majority of the
- 72 seats in the National Assembly, but the key question will be
- the size of its victory. If SWAPO gains two-thirds of the
- seats, it will be able to frame the country's new constitution
- on its own terms. But observers believed the voting procedures
- would limit SWAPO's prospects. Example: since about half the
- voters were illiterate, many were likely to be confused by the
- fact that nine of the ten contending parties had ballot symbols
- that were similiar to SWAPO's clenched fist.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-