Jennifer Hudson to play Winnie Mandela

The Oscar-winning actor Jennifer Hudson is to play Winnie Mandela in a new biopic about the former wife of South Africa's first black president, Variety reports.

South African film-maker Darrell J Roodt, whose film Yesterday was the country's nominee for best foreign film at the 2006 Oscars, will direct Winnie, which starts shooting in May 2010. Hudson, a former American Idol contestant who won her Oscar for a bravura supporting turn in the musical Dreamgirls, will take the lead role and is also expected to sing the theme song.

"I was compelled and moved when I read the script," Hudson said. "Winnie Mandela is a complex and extraordinary woman and I'm honoured to be the actress asked to portray her. This is a powerful part of history that should be told."

The screenplay is based on Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob's biography Winnie Mandela: A Life. Despite Hudson's involvement, the movie is not a Hollywood production: the financial backing comes from firms in South Africa and Canada.

The news means that both Nelson and Winnie Mandela are being portrayed by American Academy-anointed actors in new films; Morgan Freeman is starring as the former president in the Clint Eastwood-directed Invictus, which centres on Nelson's attempts to unite his country behind the South African team in the 1995 rugby World Cup. The film, which co-stars Matt Damon as the team's captain, Francois Pienaar, is due out early next year.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, 72, remains a popular figure in South African politics despite her 1991 conviction for involvement in the kidnapping, assault and death of a 14-year-old alleged informer, Stompie Moeketsi. She and Nelson Mandela had been married for only a year before he was forced into hiding and then imprisoned in 1962 – he would only be freed in 1990. While he was in gaol, she became an increasingly powerful figure in the African National Congress and went on to run the ANC Women's League. She was deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology in the first post-apartheid government for 11 months, until allegations of corruption led to her dismissal.