The 500-strong Muslim community of Indian origin in this South African town had reason to celebrate after some land that was taken away from two families during the apartheid era was returned.

The land was handed over to the Jamaat and Ebrahim families at a function attended by Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza, North West Province Premier Ednah Molewa, Rustenburg Executive Mayor Thabo Mabe and Deputy Minister of Education Enver Surty.

The Muslim community had established a mosque, school and residential blocks for teachers on the property soon after Indians first settled in this town in the North West Province in 1916, mainly as merchants from Gujarat.

While the mosque was left untouched, all the rest of the land around it in the centre of the town was expropriated by the apartheid regime in 1958 as part of its policies to forcibly resettle Indians out of central business districts.

The Rustenburg Muslim Jamaat (RMJ) and the Omarjee Moosa Ebrahim family hosted the entire community to mark the event.

"Despite every legal effort to regain the land, no amount of legal expertise and representation could help," Mohamed Bodat, chairperson of the RMJ, told IANS.

"It was only by the grace of Allah that these injustices were halted when freedom and democracy dawned in 1994."

Didiza said she had been touched when Surty told her about the dispossession of the property. "I realised how painful it must have been for the community to be unjustly deprived of their property and witness with agony the demolition of their school and madrassa buildings."

But she commended the Indian community for establishing shops around the mosque property. The Jamaat did this to make the mosque maintenance self-sufficient by selling debentures in 1986, Bodat explained.

This is now also the plan with the re-acquired land, although there are some hurdles ahead, Bodat explained. The returned land is currently zoned as a parking area and will have to be rezoned.

The Jamaat also received money for a piece of expropriated land that could not be returned, as it has been developed since then by others who had purchased it from the government.

For the family of Omarjee Moosa Ebrahim the function was tinged with sadness. After a life-long struggle to get it back, Ebrahim passed away just three months before he could see his dream being fulfilled. His son Yunus accepted the documentation on behalf of all family members.

Premier Molewa acknowledged the role of the Indian community in the province. "(They) are less than 8,000 of the population of the North West province. Yet they have historically played a significant role in the economic and social development of our country. They provide... important human capital as professionals in the health, economic, political and social sector."

Mabe said the role of the Indian community in the freedom struggle had been acknowledged by renaming the main street in the city to Fatima Bhayat Street in memory of a member of a pioneering family that was also dispossessed of its property in the area.