In 1984, a group of 11 Dunnes Stores workers in Dublin made headlines when they refused to handle South African goods.
Over 40 years later, at the Little Museum of Dublin, some of them showed up to see former president Michael D Higgins unveil a new exhibition on Ireland’s anti-apartheid movement.
Addressing a packed room on the first floor on Wednesday evening, Higgins said “it was an honour to be in the same room as those wonderful women who were responsible for the greatest moral achievement.”
The exhibition – Together/Apart: The Irish Anti-Apartheid Struggle – was co-curated by the Little Museum of Dublin’s Dr Daryl Hendley Rooney and Prof Premesh Lalu of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.
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The Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement was launched in Dublin in April, 1964 by Kader Asmal, a South African law professor at Trinity College Dublin.
Lobbying for improved human rights, it raised awareness of the racism experienced by communities, and campaigned for the release of political prisoners.
Higgins recalled when he and his wife, Sabina, visited the prison where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. A former prisoner told him it was the “example of those [Dunnes Stores] women in Dublin that gave him courage to continue when he was a prisoner”.
Addressing their legacy on Wednesday, he said: “You will never be forgotten and you should never be forgotten ... what happened in the three years [of ensuing strikes] was very, very impressive.”
Higgins quoted Mandela towards the end of his speech saying: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Rooney told those present at the launch that the exhibition presented objects, some ordinary, others extraordinary, loaned “by the very people who campaigned, marched, and went on strike in solidarity with disenfranchised South Africans during apartheid.”
Some of the objects on show include the rugby ball used in Ireland’s controversial 1981 tour of South Africa, which is signed by both the South African and Irish squads and Mandela’s speech, which he gave outside the Mansion House in July 1990 following his acceptance of the Freedom of the City of Dublin.
The exhibition opens to the public from May 14th and will travel to South Africa in late 2026.
