ON MAY 24, cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro — Zapiro — published a cartoon depicting President Jacob Zuma as an organ grinder and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Shaun Abrahams as a monkey, dancing to the president’s tune and chained to his music box. Above Zuma’s grinder a text bubble read: "Another state organ." Above Abrahams, the words, "Another organ grinder’s monkey."The cartoon was met by strident criticism from some quarters. Offence was taken at the depiction of Abrahams as a monkey and the argument made that, in choosing to publish the cartoon, Zapiro had put his name to a racist metaphor or "trope", the destructive power of which lay in the representation of a person of colour as a monkey.SA’s particular history aside, the metaphor of an organ grinder and their monkey is a long-standing one, classically formulated as "talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey" — the suggestion being that one should engage with authority not a subordinate. Organ grinders were prominen...
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