From A friend

Thanx Maxine...


The Ant and the Grasshopper:
Original Version from Australia
An ant and a grasshopper lived in the same field. During the summer the ant works all day and night bringing in supplies for the winter, and he prepares his home to keep him warm during the cold moths ahead.
Meanwhile, the grasshopper hops and sings, eats all the grass he wants and procreates. Come winter, it gets bitterly cold and the grass dies. The ant is well fed and warm in his house, but the grasshopper has not prepared for the winter, so he dies, leaving a whole horde of little grasshoppers without food or shelter.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS THAT ONE SHOULD WORK HARD TO ENSURE THAT YOU COULD TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.


However....................
The SOUTHERN AFRICAN Version
The first part is the same, but because it happened in Southern Africa, there are a few complications …
The starving offspring of the grasshopper demanded to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed, while next door they are living in terrible conditions without food and proper clothing. A TV crew shows up and broadcasts footage of the poor grasshoppers, contrasting this with footage of the ant, snug in his comfortable home with a pantry full of food.

The public is stunned. How can it be, in this beautiful field, which the poor grasshoppers are allowed to suffer so, while the ant lives in the lap of luxury? In a blink of an eye, the AGU (African Grasshopper's Union) is formed. They charged the ant with "species bias" and claim that grasshoppers are the victims of 30 million years of green oppression. They stage a protest in front of the ant's house and trash the street. When interviewed by the TV crews, they state that if their demands are not met, they will be forced into a life of crime. Just for practice, they loot the TV crew's luggage and hijack their van.

The TRC (Take and Redistribute Commission) justifies their behaviour by saying that this is the legacy of the ant's discrimination and oppression of the grasshoppers. They demand that the ant apologises to ! the grasshoppers for what he has done, and that he makes amends for all the other ants in history that have done the same thing to grasshoppers. PAGAD (People Against Grasshopper Abuse and Distress) states that they are starting a holy war against ants.

The President appears on the 8 o'clock news and says that he will do everything he can for the grasshoppers that have been denied the prosperity they deserve by those who have benefited unfairly during the summer. The government drafts the EEGAD (Economic Equity for Greens an Disadvantaged) Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to employ a propionate number of green insects, and, having nothing left to pay his back taxes, his home is confiscated by the government for redistribution.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing off the last of the ant's food while the government house he's in (which just happens to be the ant's old house) crumbles around him because he is too lazy and incompetent to maintain it. Showing on TV (which he and a couple of friends stole from another ant), the President is standing before a group of wildly singing and dancing grasshoppers, announcing that a new era of "equality" has dawned on the field. The ant, meanwhile, is not allowed to work because he has historically benefited from the field.

In his place, ten grasshoppers only work two hours a day and steal half of what they actually harvest. When winter comes again and not enough food has been harvested, they strike and demand a 150% increase in their wages so that they can buy more food, which now has to be imported because the grasshoppers were not productive enough to produce enough food.

The ant packs his things and immigrates to another field, where he starts a highly successful food company and becomes a millionaire by selling food to the field from where he came.

Salagatle!