Ebrahim Murat said a quiet prayer for his late wife moments before accepting the keys to his new home in Cape Town's District Six area from former president Nelson Mandela on Wednesday.
Murat and about 67,000 others were evicted from District Six, a once bustling neighborhood on the edge of Cape Town, 37 years ago after the racist apartheid government declared it a "whites only" area under the 1950 Group Areas act.
Former residents can now return to the land, although most of the buildings were destroyed, or be compensated for their lost property under the government's land claims program.
"My wife died last year a short while after we heard we could move back to our home where we raised our 15 children," Murat, 87, said at a ceremony celebrating the return.
"Now I will live here with my surviving four children," he said.
Mandela handed Murat the keys to his new home -- the first of many that will be given to about 4,000 families returning over the next three years.
For now only nine white double-story houses stand at the edge of a vacant field that was once a bustling suburb.
"I am very happy indeed to be here and able to give the keys to settle in peace and permanently in your new home with no threat of being removed like so many years ago," Mandela said to the crowd of about 3,000 who had gathered for the ceremony.
Mandela, who was given the symbolic keys to District Six, said he was surprised people wanted to hear him speak. "My colleagues say people won't want to listen to me because I am no longer in power. They say I am a has-been," he said to applause from the crowd.
The day also marked 14 years since Mandela's release from jail.
District Six was a vibrant predominantly mixed-race suburb on the outskirts of the city. It was established in 1867 and inhabited by traders, merchants and freed slaves.
Blacks were the first to be forcibly removed, in 1901, when the white government began enforcing racial divisions.
In 1966, the apartheid government declared it a "whites only" area.
The government gave eviction notices to the thousands who called "the Six" their home.
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