SOUTH AFRICAN SAGA

Harry Belafonte has acquired dramatic rights from South Africa’s imprisoned black nationalist Nelson Mandela and his outspoken wife Winnie, and it’s become the seed for what could be the first network docudrama on apartheid.

Being developed as an ABC miniseries, tentatively to be shot next year, it would cover 40 years of black oppression in South Africa. It’s undecided whether Belafonte would play Mandela. According to producers Mark Rosenberg and Jon Avnet, Jane Fonda is one of several major actors who have expressed interest in participating.

The miniseries won’t be specifically about the Mandelas, according to the producers, but “more a history of the South African condition.”

Martyred black resistance leader Steven Biko, the subject of a Universal Studios big-screen film to be shot later this year, could be portrayed, but “we don’t intend to infringe on Universal’s rights,” said the producers.

Denzel Washington will star in “Biko,” to be directed in Zimbabwe by Richard Attenborough, but a mid-August start has just been pushed back.