“Water is not just life, but water is alive.” So says Zayaan Khan, an artist, researcher and activist in the food justice movement. We can see this in the ways in which it moves from providing home to abundant and diverse life forms, to saturating itself with the minerals held in the earth’s rocks and mountains, which form the essential building blocks of life, and then uses these to animate dormant seeds into the fields and forests which sustain all life on earth.

In her work as a seed librarian, Zayaan is also a keeper of ancient and indigenous ways of knowing about the practices that have informed ethical and sustainable stewardship of our land and water resources. Much of this knowledge has been lost to us through our disconnection from the land and the separation of our communities as a result of colonialism and a human-centred trajectory of urbanisation and modernity.

Using memory and story, Zayaan’s work aims to revitalise our understanding of the relationship between land, seed and water as the vehicles by which our society was not only divided, but through which we can imagine and cultivate more closely connected futures. She brings us into close contact with the urban apocalypse we are all part of making, and the many ways of knowing and doing which can help us to understand and live through it.

For Water For Life – The water podcast tells the extraordinary stories of ordinary people who have made it their life’s mission to preserve, purify and protect South Africa’s water resources. This podcast series is made possible by JoJo – for water, for life.