Helen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape in South Africa, has made two startling
claims about the water crisis in the province. She says there will be anarchy when the
taps run dry, and that normal policing will be inadequate.
She stated this as fact. Neither claim has any basis in truth. But they reflect an “elite
panic”: society’s elite’s fear of social disorder. We see this when public officials and
the media draw on stereotypes of public panic and disorder, or, in Zille’s words,
“anarchy
