Mary Manning

We thought this was just the way it is, like, in South Africa.

And we walked into the terminal and we were approached by someone who said, are you the group travelling from Dublin?

And we said, yes.

And they said, OK, follow us.

And we had heard all these stories about activists falling out windows and being arrested and falling down stairs and stuff.

So we were terrified.

that nobody actually knew where we were.

Because the last thing that we had, and I wasn't the only one, other people had phoned home as well and said, look, we're not going to South Africa, we'll be home tomorrow.

There wasn't an Irish embassy in South Africa at the time, but two of the people who were travelling had British passports.

So they got to speak to the British consulate who basically said to them, nothing we can do.

So that was what everybody, like all our family spoke up to was, you know, where are they and what's happening?

Nobody can get in contact with us.

Nobody knew where we were.

Bishop Tutu was waiting at the airport.

So when he heard what was happening, he kind of got the word out.

it really changed people's attitudes because they were starting to wonder then, well, why didn't they let, I mean, they're shop workers, why didn't they let them in?

What have they got to hide over there?

Like what, you know, and they shot themselves in the foot, really, they said African, as Africans did, because had they let us in, I mean, like, there might have been a little bit of interest in it, but not to the extent that happened once they didn't let us in and when we went missing for the 24 hours.

So they really kind of brought more attention to it than it would have got had we just gone over.

So what they did was they changed the law.