Worrier state: Risk, anxiety and moral panic in South Africa

Abstract

While reading Nicky Falkof’s Worrier State: Risk, anxiety, and moral panic in South Africa, I couldn’t help but think of the video of Nina Simone being interviewed that often floats around social media where she is asked about her idea of freedom. She answers, unequivocally: No fear! Simone’s association of freedom with no fear speaks to the African American experience of everyday terrorism of racism in the United States, where black people, up to the contemporary moment, fear for their lives from white people’s anti-black violence. Ironically, in South Africa, post-apartheid democracy was supposed to bring freedom, not fear, but post-apartheid South Africa, as demonstrated in Worrier State, is gripped by risk, anxiety and moral panic. Worrier State is a timely contribution to a better understanding of cultures of fear that have come to shape post-apartheid reality.