A PAINTING by a famous activist found in a Huddersfield charity shop has been reunited with the artist’s family.

Art work by Hilda Bernstein – a key figure in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement – was discovered by Oxfam charity shop worker Heather Brooker.

It looked like a stained and shabby print, but Heather, who frames artwork for Oxfam, did a bit of research and discovered the limited edition piece of art was by Hilda Bernstein.

Hilda and her husband Lionel fought against apartheid.

The picture – called Blue Wildebeest – went up for silent auction and the artist’s own children, Toni, Patrick, Frances and Keith, won the bid.

Now Mrs Bernstein’s daughter, Frances, who lives in Leeds, has collected the painting.

Heather said: “I feel like it’s gone home.”

It was an Examiner story about the auction in August which alerted one of Mrs Bernstein’s sons in France to the painting’s discovery.

His sister Frances submitted a bid of £100 to add the piece to the family collection.

Heather added: “It had a bit of mildew on it and until I cleaned it up and saw the signature I didn’t know what it was.

“Frances came and told us about her family and she goes into schools and talks about her mother and father’s life.

“Her father was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela and her mother was a painter, poet and writer, as well as a political activist.

“Hearing their story makes me realise this has gone to a good home, and back home where it belongs.”

Hilda was born in London in 1915 and moved to South Africa in 1933. Her most important political work inside South Africa was establishing the non-racial Federation of South African Women in 1954.

She was also involved in the Congress of the People in 1955 as her husband was the main draftsman of the Freedom Charter.

Hilda had a few brushes with the law, being charged in connection with the black mineworkers’ strike in 1946 and was also banned from trade union work.

She was detained during the state of emergency in 1960 and forced to flea with her husband into exile through Bechuanaland and Northern Rhodesia, where they were declared prohibited immigrants by the outgoing British colonial government.

She began work as an artist in 1972 and her work was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Hilda died at the age of 91 in Cape Town in 2006.