Winnie shelters Congolese family displaced by SA xenophobia

Johannesburg - Well-known South African activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was reported Wednesday to have taken in a refugee family that fled two weeks of xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

Beeld newspaper reported that the former wife of South Africa's first democratically-elected president Nelson Mandela had invited a Congolese family to live with her until they found somewhere else to stay.

'I am so grateful for her help. Until now, there was no hope for us,' Shenila Tshibangu, 29, who fled the violence with her husband, Omar Luabeya, 29, and her two daughters, aged one and two, told the paper.

Madikizela-Mandela has repeatedly spoken on issues of national interest since re-entering politics in December.

The 71-year-old topped the poll in elections to the National Executive Committee, the highest decision-making body of the ruling African National Congress at a December party conference.

She was one of the first ANC heavyweights to visit the victims of the xenophobic attacks that have claimed at least 56 lives since May 11 and displaced tens of thousands of migrant workers.

Tshibangu's family, which lost all its belongings in the violence, had been sheltering at a police station in eastern Johannesburg.