Zapiro's cartoon depicting President Jacob Zuma as an organ grinder and new National Prosecuting Authority boss Shaun Abrahams as his dancing monkey has provoked much debate and in the process caused considerable offence.We'd like to apologise for the latter.We didn't think Zapiro's primary objective was to portray a black man as a monkey. Rather, we thought the cartoon foregrounded the controversial nature of the relationship between Zuma and Abrahams in the wake of the NPA saying that it would appeal a High Court ruling that corruption charges be reinstated against Zuma.And this was the spirit in which The Times published the cartoon.The organ grinder and his dancing monkey is a well-known comic device and we thought this would govern readers' interpretation of the cartoon.We were wrong.The monkey motif was quickly seized on by the vociferous watchdog of social media as a racist trope and all context was lost."Zapiro is a racist, he's done this before, and in fact he is no better than Penny Sparrow."He is, of course, very different from Sparrow.One is an alienated racist who believes that black people behave like monkeys and is presently hiding out on the south coast; the other has a body of work committed to the principles of freedom and human rights and is in deep debate with himself about how it all went so wrong.The debate is one worth having. Does the organ-grinder monkey metaphor capture the nature of Zuma's relationship with Abrahams? Yes, perhaps it does. Does the comic metaphor justify the depiction of a black man as a monkey? No, as has become increasingly clear, it does not.Zapiro has admitted that this edgy cartoon was possibly a failed experiment. Does this mean, though, that in determining meaning we can throw all context out of the window? No, it does not.What it does mean though, is that, whatever the context, black men should not be depicted as monkeys.And this, in superior measure, is the context that should, and not just in our post-Sparrow world but always, govern all others in such matters...