The African National Congress in the Western Cape on Tuesday welcomed the settlement of the Dysselsdorp land claim in the southern Cape.
The government and a community in the town will sign a R24-million development deal on Saturday which will see the residents resume farming the land they were forced off in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said 978 land claimants would soon return to the land in terms of an agreement negotiated between the community, the municipality and various national departments.
The chairperson of the ANC's southern Cape region, Lanval Reid, congratulated Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza and other role players on the settlement.
"This victory is a cause for celebration throughout the southern Cape and Klein Karoo," Reid said.
"Many thought it could never happen. It was the result of a long struggle in which people have sacrificed and suffered a great deal."
Reid said the settlement would correct the "brutal" injustice of the national party government.
The agreement would be signed at the Bloupunt cemetery.
Regional Land Claims Commissioner for the Western Cape Alan Roberts said Dysselsdorp was granted to the London Mission Society in the 1830s but in 1874 the Mission gave the farm to the inhabitants.
Each person was given a garden allotment and a dwelling plot while the remainder of the farm was used for communal grazing.
A proclamation in terms of the Group Areas and the Slums acts were used to evict the inhabitants who lived in small villages on the farm.
The group areas proclamation split the farm in two - the garden allotment area was proclaimed white and the other area was described as coloured.
The first removal of people from the garden allotment area took place in 1976 and people were gradually moved to a settlement which was erected on the common ground in the "Coloured" area until the last removal in 1986.
The Dysselsdorp municipality and the Klein-Karoo District Council at first wanted to go ahead with development plans to satisfy housing needs in the area.
The authorities, however, acknowledged the claimants' land rights and a moratorium was placed on the development of the land.
The municipality, the district council, the departments of agriculture and land affairs, water affairs and forestry, and constitutional development along with the non-governmental organisation, the Southern Cape Land Committee, the restitution commission and the claimants had found "an amicable solution" to the claim. - Sapa