A Tolerant Young Man

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 who voted. For months, the south has been torn by a Mau Mau-like revolt among its 4,000,000 black tribesmen, who fear political domination by the 9,000,000 people of the mostly Arab and Moslem north.

Scholar & Snake. The election made good the promise of Prime Minister Sadik el Mahdi, 31, who has called for a national reconciliation with the deceptively simple slogan: "Pacification with persuasion." A mild Oxford scholar, Sadik last July replaced Mohammed Ahmed Mahgoub, who chose to discourage the rebellious Anya Nya (named for the poison of the black Mamba snake) with retaliatory raids on southern villages. Instead, Sadik established "peace villages" where tribesmen intimidated by the Anya Nya could live under the protection of his troops. In quiet, unemotional tones, the world's second youngest head of government (Burundi's Michel Micombero is only 26) convinced the bush chieftains of his tolerant outlook. He also promised to hold elections in the southern districts now unrepresented in the 233-member Constituent Assembly, which is charged with framing the Sudan's first permanent constitution.

The rebels are fighting for full independence from the north. Northern Moslems are dark-skinned people who are either nomadic or live in mud-brick houses and work on plantations, growing the cotton that is the Sudan's only big cash earner abroad. In contrast, the flat-nosed blacks in the south live in thatched huts in the rain forests and on the savannas, are largely tied to a subsistence agriculture. Many of the tribesmen living in the south are converted Christians who feel that the regime tries to make them bow to the will--and many of the religion-centered customs--of the Moslem majority.

Uncle v. Nephew. Though he is a great-grandson of the Mahdi whose howling hordes overran General "Chinese" Gordon at Khartoum in 1885, Sadik has shown himself to be a man of tolerance. In 1965 he worked closely with Mahgoub in banning the Communist Party because a Sudanese Communist had made a slanderous remark about the wife of the Prophet Mohammed. But within his own Umma Party, the young Mahdi speaks for religious toleration for the south. His chief rival within the Umma is his uncle, Imam Hadi el Mahdi, 47, who advocates a tougher policy toward the rebels and, Sadik believes, wants to establish a Moslem theocracy throughout the Sudan.

"My uncle doesn't seem to realize that the 20th century is upon us," says Sadik. "The country simply must shape itself to the demands of the modern world or we will be bypassed and become a stagnant, reactionary backwater." The successful conclusion of the elections in the south will be the first step. If Sadik's 13,000-man occupation army can silence the Anya Nya during the balloting, which is expected to take three weeks to allow everyone time to get in from the bush, Sadik should score a critical victory for unity: his Umma supporters hope to win as many as 20 of the 34 contested seats.

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