Cape Town — A community of Basarwa or San people of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana today won the right to live and hunt on their ancestral land.

In the culmination of a long legal battle, a three-judge panel of the Botswana High Court voted 2-1 to rule the government's refusal to allow the Basarwa to return to their land as "unlawful and unconstitutional."

The community of hunter-gatherers - sometimes called Bushmen - was forced out of the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve in 2002. The government said their lifestyle had become obsolete and they were wanting to become agriculturalists, which was incompatible with preserving wildlife.

In a vigorous campaign against the government and the De Beers mining corporation, the London-based NGO, Survival International, said De Beers wanted to mine diamonds in the game reserve.

Community leader Roy Sesana today said outside the court that the community was "crying with happiness," according to a Survival International press release. "Finally we have been set free," he reportedly said. "The evictions have been very, very painful for my people. I hope that now we can go home to our land."

Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, said the ruling was "a victory for the Bushmen and for indigenous peoples everywhere in Africa." No immediate comment was issued by the government, although it was reported to be considering appealing the judgement.