Kings of the Savannah: A Tale About Growth

Out on the grassy plains of Africa nature plays out in harmony. Mother Nature has decreed that the lions eat the zebras and that the zebras breed faster than the lions so there are always plenty of them about. Zebras of course are not keen on the idea of being eaten by lions, but are comforted by the fact that the more zebras there are, the less likely they themselves will be the one who gets eaten. Besides, they know that Mother Nature is a cranky old biddy who shouldn’t be messed with.

And so they all lived happily (except of course for the odd zebra or two who didn’t live because it was mealtime) - but not ever after.

Because at some point the zebras started to notice that the lions had begun to kill more zebras than they could possibly eat.

‘What’s going on?’ they demanded to know.

‘Growth.’ said king lion, whose full name was “A ‘king lion, run”, but who’d dropped the article, the apostrophe, the comma and the verb for the sake of simplicity.

‘It sounds more like greed to me.’ said king zebra, whose full name was “Not another ‘king zebra” but who had shortened his name for reasons not dissimilar to those above.

‘Not at all,’ said king lion. ‘Greed is an ugly human concept which we would never embrace. Growth however is natural and is thus pure and beautiful.’

‘Besides,’ said his second-in-line lion, ‘If you put the growth into a spreadsheet you can produce colourful bar charts that really liven up the room!’

‘Oh!’ said the zebras.

And so they all lived happily (except of course for those one or two zebras being eaten at meal times and those hundreds of zebras being needlessly slaughtered in the name of growth) - but not ever after.

‘We need to do something,’ said the zebras. ‘Black and white lives matter!’

‘You need to arm yourselves,’ said the arms dealers.

‘Where did you come from?’ asked the zebras.

‘That’s not important,’ replied the arms dealers. ‘What is important is that if you had guns, lots and lots of guns, you could defend yourselves against your enemies, the lions.’

‘Oh!’ said the zebras. ‘But what’s in it for you?’

‘Growth,’ said the arms dealers. ‘And lots of colourful bar charts that really liven up the room.’

‘We’ve heard about those,’ said the zebras knowingly.

And so they all lived happily (except of course for those one or two zebras being eaten at meal times and those hundreds of zebras being needlessly slaughtered in the name of growth and those lions being gunned down by vengeful zebras) but not ever after.

‘We need to do something,’ said the lions, not surprisingly. ‘Tan lives matter!’

‘You need to arm yourselves,’ said the arms dealers.

‘Where did you come from?’ asked the lions.

‘That’s not important,’ replied the arms dealers. ‘What is important is that if you had guns, lots and lots of guns, you could defend yourselves against your enemies, the zebras.’

‘We like the way you think,’ said the lions. ‘But what’s in it for you?’

‘Growth,’ said the arms dealers. ‘And lots of colourful bar charts that really liven up the room.’

‘They really do.’ said the second-in-line lion, nodding his head vigorously in agreement.

And so the arms dealers all lived happily ever after, with an abundance of growth and plenty of colourful bar charts which really do liven up the room.

As for the kings of the savannah, well it’s hard to say. Sadly they’re way too busy shooting at each other to ever ask themselves if they are happy. But they too have plenty of colourful bar charts, which really do liven up the room, so it can’t be all bad. Can it?