John Legend has joined Bill Condon’s apartheid-era drama The Road Home, playing US singer, actor and civil-rights activist Harry Belafonte. The film centres on South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela and his role in opposing apartheid, highlighting tensions within the anti-apartheid movement over cultural boycotts and the use of music as political expression.

Thabo Rametsi stars as Masekela, with Guy Pearce as Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Cynthia Erivo as Miriam Makeba and Johnny Flynn as Paul Simon. The story follows disagreement over Simon’s Graceland album, after which Masekela and Makeba form a band to take South African music worldwide; filming has begun in South Africa, with a script by Michael Bronner and research supported by the Hugh Masekela Heritage Foundation.