Jennifer Hudson to play Winnie Mandela in movie

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – DREAMGIRLS star, Oscar winner and award winning-singer Jennifer Hudson will now take up the role of Winnie Mandela, the former wife of South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela. 

The movie, ‘Winnie’, is based on the Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob biography ‘Winnie Mandela: A Life’, and will begin shooting on May 30, 2010 in South African locations, according to EURweb.com. 

The website also reported that the film would be directed by Darrell J. Roodt, the veteran South African filmmaker whose 2006 movie ‘Yesterday’ was Africa’s Best Foreign Film nominee, and who also directed ‘Cry, The Beloved Country,’ and ‘Sarafina!’ 

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as she is now known, was dubbed the Mother of the Nation during apartheid. She became a torch-bearer of the freedom struggle during Nelson Mandela's 27-year imprisonment for resisting white supremacist rule. 

However, her name was later tainted by her implication in the kidnapping of a teenage militant who was found murdered near her home in the late 1980s and by her conviction for fraud during her time as head of the ANC Women's League, which saw her quitting her job as member of parliament (MP). 

Despite the controversy, she is still hugely popular among grassroots ANC members, many of whom sympathised with her for being divorced by Mandela a few years after his release from prison. Mandela accused her of infidelity. The filmmakers will tell the whole story, good and bad. 

The now 73-year-old professional social worker returned to Parliament earlier this year as an MP in the African National Congress of new President Jacob Zuma. 

The film project comes as a film by Clint Eastwood about Mandela, starring US actor Morgan Freeman as the ageing statesman. It is preparing to hit US screens on December 11, 2010.