South Africa's parliament passed a motion for land expropriation from white farmers without compensation. This confiscation forms an integral part of the ruling African National Congress government's platform. The motion passed to begin the process of amending the country's constitution to allow confiscation of white-owned land without compensation. In one version of the proposal the government owns the land after confiscation and allocates it through bureaucrats to those deemed in need. A similar policy occurred in Zimbabwe where the president decided on fast-track land reform and declared that white settlers took the land without paying so it could be taken from them without paying. Farms were not given to black farm managers or workers. More than a million farm workers and dependents were displaced. Beneficiaries of the seizures were ruling-party officials and associates of the president. These elites lacked experience and equipment to operate the farms. Agricultural production declined sharply with maize yields falling from more than 1.5 million tons annually to 500,000 tons. Wheat production fell from 309,000 tons to 27,000 tons. Tobacco production dropped from 265,000 tons to 66,000 tons. Gross domestic product declined by half. Inflation rose 7600 percent. Unemployment reached 80 percent. Life expectancy fell to age 34 for women and 36 for men. The same pattern of land seizures has begun in South Africa.

Private property rights in land form a cornerstone of liberty that the American founders embedded in the Constitution, recognizing ownership as a safeguard against tyranny, yet these rights have steadily eroded through expanding socialism, environmental regulations, federal land holdings, and the Supreme Court's Kelo decision permitting eminent domain for private development. The Bible consistently affirms individual land ownership as a sacred principle established by God, evident from Abraham's purchase of property through the laws given to Israel that assume personal holdings, such as the prohibition against coveting a neighbor's house in the tenth commandment and the command not to remove ancient landmarks in Deuteronomy. This ownership extends to family inheritance, as illustrated by the Jubilee provisions requiring restoration of sold land to its original owners and Naboth's refusal to relinquish his ancestral vineyard to Ahab, an act that provoked divine condemnation of the king's abuse of power. In the New Testament, Peter upholds the same principle by affirming that land and its proceeds remain under individual control even amid communal sharing among believers, while the Mark of the Beast is portrayed as ultimately abolishing the right to buy and sell. God declares the world and its fullness to be His yet grants humans stewardship over land to teach lessons in authority and responsibility that prepare them for greater roles in His Kingdom. The progressive weakening of these biblical land rights in contemporary America reveals a broader departure from divine principles that once anchored the nation's foundations.