Blood Fruit takes us back to the height of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1984 when Mary Manning, a 21-year-old Dunnes Stores checkout girl, refused to sell Outspan grapefruits under direction from her union in support of the anti-apartheid struggle. She and ten other supporters were suspended and a strike ensued.
Sinead O’Brien reconstructs the story of their struggle, interviewing the strikers, their employers and their admirers (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson and Nelson Mandela) and reminding us that ordinary people can, with determination and integrity, achieve extraordinary results.
Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn