When Durban businessman Schabir Shaik was told by a former accountant to slow down his payments to deputy president Jacob Zuma and the ANC, he said she was not seeing the bigger picture.

"What is a problem today, would not be a problem tomorrow," Shaik told the court.

He said he did not accept the State's case that his company made the payments despite being in financial trouble. He said the Nkobi group of companies was merely experiencing some growing pains.

It was the third day of his cross-examination at his fraud and corruption trial in the Durban High Court.

Court usher Hugh Webb, however, managed to steal the show with his announcement, in Zulu, English and Afrikaans, to those in court to switch off their cellphones, which had disturbed proceedings on a number of occasions.

In answers that ranged from disarmingly charming to bitingly sarcastic, Shaik weathered some technical cross-examination by lead prosecutor Billy Downer.

Early on in the morning the two had an acrimonious exchange and after that the relative peace that reigned in Court A was shattered.

The one exchange, stopped by Judge HiIlary Squires, was triggered by a question of who attended a meeting.

Shaik: "That is a petty question."

Downer: "Please refrain from such comments and answer the question."

Shaik: I am entitled to my opinion and I say that the question was petty.

Squires: No, Mr Shaik, listen to Mr Downer's question and refrain from such offensive comments.

Shaik: Forgive me, my lord. Forgive me, Mr Downer.

Later, Downer struck back, during a discussion of the State's allegations forming the basis of a fraud charge and an alternative charge of tax evasion against Shaik.

It is alleged that Shaik had more than a million rand, which included some of the payments he had made to Zuma, irregularly written-off in his company's books.

Shaik admitted that it had happened but claimed he was misled by his auditors and that he had it fixed once it had been pointed out to him by the Scorpions.

Shaik: "I would want to reflect an honest set of accounts."

Downer: "How are we to understand the other false documents in this case?"

Shaik: "I have never been subpoenaed for not paying tax."

Downer: "But you were prepared to fake your qualifications and produce false balance sheets."

Shaik: "...There is some good in me and some bad..."

Squires: "You mean faking credentials are one thing, but lying to the taxman is another?"

Shaik also told the court that he believed that his former secretary, Bianca Singh, one of the main witnesses in the trial against him, had been told what to say.

Shaik said this while trying to explain the way his company had accounted for rent he had paid for a flat where Zuma was staying. He said it was because it was a "confidential matter".

Shaik had told the court earlier that Zuma had moved to the apartment because his life was under threat during the IFP/ANC conflict in KwaZulu- Natal during that time. When he was asked about the way the payments were accounted for in his company records, he said he had wanted to maintain confidentiality about where Zuma lived.

But Downer challenged Shaik, saying that Singh and former Nkobi accountant Celia Bester had told the court they knew about Zuma's apartment. Singh testified that Shaik would visit Zuma there.

"Somebody might have informed her to say that," Shaik shot back. "Bianca Singh would not know where I would go in the evening."

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and the Cape Argus.