In 1948 the South African government passed a law segregating blacks and whites known as apartheid. Nearly forty years later, Mary Manning, a 21-year old checkout girl at Dunnes Stores in Henry Street in Dublin, refused to register the sale of two Outspan grapefruits under a directive from her union in support of the anti-apartheid struggle. She and ten other workers who supported her action were suspended with immediate effect and so a strike ensued.

Mary and her colleagues knew little or nothing about apartheid and assumed it would be a matter of days before they could return to work but the arrival on the picket line of Nimrod Sejake changed everything. His influence on the strikers and their struggle to bring about change proved to be the central turning point in their motivation for not only continuing the strike but advancing it on to the international stage.

Director Sinead O’Brien talks to Garry Kelly of GK Media about her documentary which screens on Thursday July 10th at 3pm in the Town Hall Theatre.