Why treating water scarcity as a security issue is a bad idea.

Abstract

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”