AT­TIL­LAH SPRINGER

Please give a help­ing hand oh Jah

To guide all of us to­geth­er

Peo­ple are stray­ing and stray­ing

Di­vid­ing them­selves from each oth­er

There's too many hope­less souls

And ragga­muf­fin sol­diers

What we need is love

-Vice Ver­sa Love, Bar­ring­ton Levy

No love lost be­tween strange bed­fel­lows. No love lost in a mar­riage of con­ve­nience where the quest for pow­er is the thing that at­tracts you to the one you say you love and then when you re­alise the pow­er that you have is not enough, you find a fault and say this is not what you want­ed.

It's the kind of fake love that we know round these here parts. The skin-teeth kind of love that starts off all hot and sweaty. All pro­nounce­ments of in­ter­est in com­mit­ting to change. Change what ex­act­ly? The de­sire for pow­er? The way we have di­vid­ed our­selves? The fact that we don't know who we are or where we're go­ing?

The change we thought we would get is not the change that comes. The change is a shuf­fling. The change is mu­si­cal chairs for grown-ups. Where the par­ty nev­er ends. The par­ty is fund­ed and the crowd is awed by the beau­ty and the wealth of those who dance with love in their eyes on the stage. The change has not come. The change is like­ly to not ever be­come the change we want­ed.

If on­ly we knew what we want­ed in the first place. The prob­lem is that we don't know what we want and so the change is fleet­ing. The mar­riage is re­al­ly just a fling. Not quite a one-night stand but an ex­per­i­ment in monogamy for peo­ple who re­al­ly would sleep with any­one, even per­haps the dev­il to get that high of pow­er.

In the af­ter­math of the re­la­tion­ship the ac­cu­sa­tions fly thick and fast. Who wasn't re­al­ly com­mit­ted. Who was un­rea­son­able and too de­mand­ing. Re­la­tion­ship dra­ma aired in pub­lic like a man and his out­side woman fight­ing on the prom­e­nade for every­body to see the spec­ta­cle of what hap­pens when ex­pec­ta­tions are un­ful­filled and egos get in the way of love.

You hear all their busi­ness. About who loved who more and who was un­will­ing to tru­ly com­mit. It is trag­ic. But not to­tal­ly un­ex­pect­ed. In the game of pol­i­tics, love is not some­thing that you're sup­posed to feel. It is a far more cal­cu­lat­ing sit­u­a­tion. It is a far more dan­ger­ous thing that is not re­al­ly in­formed by care. To care is to be a bobolee. To care is to at­tract the con­tempt of those for whom pol­i­tics is a fight to see who will win all the spoils.

The small­er part­ner in the part­ner­ship is not re­al­ly need­ed. The big­ger part­ner is an is­land, a rock. A whole un­shak­able move­ment that ac­tu­al­ly doesn't need the ap­proval of the small­er part­ner. The small­er part­ner who knows noth­ing of the pow­er the big­ger part­ner knows, rev­els in. The small­er part­ner is in­vit­ed to join the ride. On­ly for as long as it is nec­es­sary for the big­ger part­ner to have the ap­pear­ance of af­fec­tion for oth­ers.

When it's over, it is over. The big­ger part­ner does not look back. The big­ger part­ner will have oth­er flings and oth­er al­liances. The big­ger part­ner doesn't mind us­ing small­er ones to seem more lov­ing. To seem less cold. To seem as if it is open and wel­com­ing and not a user and an ad­van­tage tak­er. The big­ger part­ner un­der­stands the naivete of those who are yet to taste the sweet­ness of mass po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

The big­ger part­ner knows the game bet­ter. The small­er part­ner will even­tu­al­ly get the mes­sage and slink off in­to shamed shad­ows. Or lash out like a spurned, scorned lover em­bit­tered by the lack of love shown. It hap­pens. No love lost in a part­ner­ship that is so un­equal­ly yoked. No love lost in an al­liance of sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als with a bunch of wannabes so des­per­ate for pow­er that they lap greed­i­ly for any crumbs thrown their way.

The part­ner­ship march­es on, with or with­out part­ners. The part­ner­ship will al­ways find part­ners in a land that has lost love for it­self. Fifty looms large on the hori­zon and it's not that old in the grand scheme of na­tions. In hu­man years it's a life­time. In hu­man years you ex­pect that the whole na­tion would have fig­ured it­self out and grown up enough to have ma­ture pol­i­tics. You ex­pect a cer­tain lev­el of hon­esty, a cer­tain lev­el of trans­paren­cy.

A cer­tain lev­el of open­ness to change, an un­der­stand­ing of what is pos­si­ble. But this is too much to ask. Be­cause in the grand scheme of na­tions we are still teenagers re­al­ly. Fum­bling and waste­ful and in­se­cure and re­bel­lious and risk-tak- ing for no good rea­son oth­er than our brains haven't de­vel­oped prop­er­ly yet. And our hearts? Our hearts are nowhere near ready to love our­selves enough to do what is best for all of us.