43 Secondly, because of sin and human greed, the Bible is full of examples where the rich and powerful grabbed other peoples’ lands, thus disempowering them and leaving them homeless, without food and other means of livelihood. With their land taken many of them became slaves of the powerful. They became economically disempowered and relegated to a life of poverty, hunger and starvation, and were completely at the mercy of the rich and powerful. A very good example is found in Nehemiah where a situation had arisen where the poor were oppressed not by an external power but by their own kindred to the extent that they had to mortgage their fields with its vineyards and homes in order to survive. The oppression was by their own kindred, hence they complained to Nehemiah: “Our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, our fields and vineyards now belong to others” (Nehemiah 5:5). This very much sounds like our experience in Zimbabwe today where a few people have amassed land and other properties at the expense of the poor, rendering the poor even poorer. In the biblical tradition the only way to redeem the situation was through the Jubilee whereby on every 50th year those who had grabbed or used their monitory power to take other peoples land were required to return that land to its rightful owners. Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming the Jubilee year – “the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18-19). In His teaching the Good News is clearly linked to the liberation of the poor, the oppressed, and those suffering in many ways the restitution of their lands. In Biblical terms land restitution is seen as an integral part of freedom. The freedom of those who have been oppressed is manifest in the repossession of their land. Until the land is redeemed the people will continue to groan and to be restless; the land will continue to groan. According to Paul’s letter to the Romans the redemption of God’s people also means the redemption of all of God’s creation (Rom. 8), which in our understanding means the restoration of the land to its rightful owners. What we are saying is that land restitution must follow the liberation of a people. It is a process that God in His love ordered in the Jubilee year for the empowerment of the poor and dispossessed. Since our God is a God of order and not chaos, that process must be done in an orderly fashion and should never be intended to make the powerful more powerful or the rich richer. There must be a deliberate preferential option for the poor in any redistribution of the land as this is in line with the divinely instituted Jubilee concept. It must not take away even that little that the poor may still possess as is often experienced. Any land redistribution must be intended to sustain life and not to destroy life and not increase the misery of the poor. The cry for the redistribution of land is indeed a cry for justice. Our situation in Zimbabwe poses many challenges and as a nation we can benefit significantly if we respond to these challenges in the light of the Biblical understanding of land and under the guidance of our core values as articulated above.