We step into the charged terrain of land, power, and belonging - and ask who really gets to claim ownership of land in Africa.  Beginning with a screening of The Battle for Laikipia at Hyde Park Picture House, we trace the tensions between Indigenous Samburu pastoralists and fourth-generation white settlers in Kenya - and unravel how the logic of private property, colonial inheritance, and climate crisis continue to shape who eats, who survives, and who gets fenced out.

From there, we widen the lens. Tamanda connects the film’s themes to her own family history across Botswana, South Africa, and Britain - from childhood memories of “the boy” on white relatives’ farms to a recent, real-life story of stolen oranges and guinea fowl that became a parable of modern policing versus ancestral justice. Aiwan brings a filmmaker’s eye to the ethics of empathy and the politics of whose pain is centred, then flips the frame to Yellowstone and the global story of land as commodity - whether in Montana, Laikipia, or the post-colonial south.

Along the way, we confront the colonial hangover that refuses to die: white settlers who never left, governments that compensate the oppressor before the oppressed, and a climate emergency exposing the same old inequalities in new forms.

In this episode:

• The Battle for Laikipia: fences, drought, and two irreconcilable logics of land
• “You’re an immigrant, mate”: whiteness, belonging, and the myth of post-colonial Africa
• Crimes of Survival: how climate crisis exposes colonial scars
• Reparations begin with the soil: who gets to own Africa, and who never did
• From Samburu to suburbia: how colonial land logic still shapes our lives
• Botswana storytime: stolen oranges, copper theft, and crimes of survival
• Police reports vs. the healer’s ritual: colonial law and Indigenous accountability
• Owning the unownable: property rights vs ancestral rights in the Global South
• Economic vs political power: when independence doesn’t mean ownership, and why land still concentrates wealth after independence
• Climate crisis as accelerant: scarcity, violence, and who gets to survive
• What would reparations rooted in soil (not slogans) actually look like?

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📬 Reflections or stories to share? Email us: rigourandflow@gmail.com

⚠️ Content note: discussion includes colonial violence, racist language, and murder/death.

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