By Bob Wylie BBC Scotland's investigations reporter

Playing in a new South Africa

A new BBC Radio Scotland series chronicles Bob Wylie's return to South Africa to talk to those who challenged apartheid and helped create the Rainbow Nation.

In 1987 mineworkers chanted during the biggest strike in the history of South African mining.

The unions were on the march, the townships were ablaze and the very foundations of apartheid, of white minority rule, were shaking.

From 1986 to the middle of 1988, I was there working for an anti-apartheid film unit which recorded the struggle for the international community and for the trade unions in South Africa.

In those times there was a smell of revolution in the air.

The leader of the mineworkers, Cyril Ramaphosa, said "we could feel the power surging in our veins".

I knew Irene Charnley well then, she was one of the top five officials in the Mineworkers Union.

Comrade Irene, as they called her, is now a chief executive of MTN, South Africa's second biggest mobile phone company, and by my reckoning at least a dollar millionaire.

It's a long story, but basically before the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994 they did a deal with big business.

There would be no programme of nationalisation if the big monopolies sold off part of their holdings to an emerging class of black entrepreneurs.

Enter Comrade Irene and others - the move from the barricades to the boardroom was easier than could have been imagined in the years of blood and thunder struggle against apartheid.

At one point I asked her what happened to Comrade Irene and how did she become Capitalist Irene

So, it was 15 years since I last saw Irene Charnley and a few weeks ago I was sitting outside her office in the mobile phone company HQ, on the fifth floor of a skyscraper in Johannesburg.

She had agreed to an interview.

In she came with a personal assistant in her trail taking instructions about this and that.

"My God," she said, "Bob Wylie, after all this time, look man, your hair's gone grey."

Comrade Irene Charnley reaps the benefits of a new South Africa

I could say that I replied "Hi Irene, you look as striking as ever", but this would not go down well with my darling Romanian wife, so we shall pass on to the interview.

At one point I asked her what happened to Comrade Irene and how did she become Capitalist Irene.

She was not having that.

Irene Charnley said it was vital for the new South Africa that a black middle class should be built.

You can see it emerging in the present day sociology of Johannesburg.

In the city's suburban malls, middle class blacks now sit down in the same expensive restaurants as middle class whites.

It's a new apartheid, based on money.

The all black city centre of Johannesburg, of the poor, is now a no-go area for both, as are large tracts of the townships.

I was in one of these restaurants myself on my second last night in Jo'burg.

Election talk

At the table next to me were 10 young blacks, most of them in their mid 20s, I'd say. Six women four men.

They were drinking Tattinger champagne at 550 rand a bottle (that's �50 to you and me).

So we got talking. I asked them who they will vote for in the elections in 2004.

Four of them said they won't bother - "we've got the vote now they won't take it away from us. Most of the others will vote for the ANC".

Wash day at a township outside Cape Town

One guy used to work for Irene Charnley's company and thinks she is a wonderful role model.

I tell them I'm going to interview Nyameka Goniwe and ask all 10 if they know why.

Only two can say she's the wife of Mathew Goniwe - one of the heroes of the struggle murdered by the security police in 1985.

By this time I'm throwing around a few bits and pieces of my rusty Zulu.

Sizonoqoba maqabane. Not bad for a white man, one of them said. I'm better at singing it......nooooo...so I give it Olive Tambo .....

In seconds they are all on their feet giving the freedom song their best, then the next table joins in.

When we sit down I set up a round of drinks in celebration that not all has been forgotten. But not Tattinger you'll understand.

In all these years I've kept in touch with Brian Tilley, one of the three guys who ran the anti-apartheid film unit in the 80s.

Brian is fond of saying he let me work for the film unit because he needed a brutish midfielder for the Flying Sparks, the football team he ran

He was my producer for the Cape Town end of the radio series I was making.

He's like a Glaswegian from Africa, always taking the mickey and always refers to me as Rob.

When we meet he's still got that big smile and says "Jeez Rob you took your time getting here bro."

We had a few whiskies of course and got to telling his wife of the good old days.

Brian is fond of saying he let me work for the film unit because he needed a brutish midfielder for the Flying Sparks, the football team he ran.

But when the going got tough I had my uses.

Brian was a cameraman in those days and always took an extra TV tape when filming demos and the like which he kept down the back of his denims.

We were filming Winnie Mandela making a speech at Wits University.

She had the crowd going when the cops moved in with dogs, whips and tear gas.

Brian turned and took the tape out of the camera, handed it to me and said see you at the office.

He put the empty tape from his denims in the camera and started filming.

Brian Tilley and Bob Wylie team up again

By the time I was on the edge of the crowd the cops were destroying his second tape.

A gorilla in a blue shirt stopped me, barking at me in Afrikaans.

"Ek prat nie afrikaans nie" - I don't speak Afrikaans, I said.

"What are you doing here meneer?"

I said: "Listen this lot has nothing to do with me I'm studying here. I'm from Glasgow, in Scotland."

Forty five clean minutes of demo and riot we had when I got back to the office.

We used the move almost as regularly as me going into the box for corner kicks with the Flying Sparks.

These are just some of the tales I can tell about Africa.

There's more coming up in the new Radio Scotland series.

So, as they say in Xhosa - Vuma indlebe zakho zivule amehlo - let your ears open your eyes.