The Ant and the Grasshopper

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CCN, TV1,2 & 3, M-Net and Carte Blanche show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The country is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Rian with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Black..’

The ANCYL stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.

Then Rev. Desmond Tutu has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake.

President Zooooma condemns the ant and blames President de Klerk, President PW Botha, HF Verwoerd and Apartheid for the grasshopper’s plight.

Julius Malema exclaims in an interview with TV News that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the Government drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of black bugs (BBE)
and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated
under the Government Land Repo Act and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared to Australia, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a Drugs related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of Nigerian spiders who terrorize and ramshackle, the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of Africa with it.

MORAL OF THE MODERN STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2012