At least four things can safely be said about Kessie Naidu, the senior counsel chosen to lead Jacob Zuma's defence team when the former deputy president finally comes to court.

He is the quintessential man of law, curious and mischievous as a street urchin while simultaneously as wily as his soubriquet "the Silver Fox" suggests. And he loves Durban, where he practices and lives.

"Oh bother," Naidu said this week, with a twinkle in his eye, "I was thinking of taking a break and writing a book. After all, I'm the only law person who's been involved in the Hefer commission, the recent Shaik trial, and I have acted in the past for Jacob Zuma.

"But now," he said, while emphasising that he doesn't yet have the Zuma brief in his hands, "it seems I am about to head the Zuma defence team. It's a tough choice, but I suppose the book will have to wait."

Naidu was, of course, joking. There is scant chance that he would turn down the chance to represent the former deputy president.

Naidu turns 56 on Tuesday and sports a mane of silver hair, but he's youthful and energetic. More to the point, he is not averse to the limelight.

He has clearly enjoyed being known as "the Silver Fox", the nickname given to him when he became widely known as the evidence leader at the 2003 Hefer commission into allegations that Bulelani Ngcuka, then national director of public prosecutions, had been a spy for the apartheid government.

The proceedings were broadcast on national television and some newspapers wrote that certain people came to prefer this broadcast and Naidu to their favourite soaps and soapie heart-throbs.

Naidu was also evidence leader at the 2002 Myburgh commission, which investigated the rapid depreciation of the rand. He led the prosecution of the three people charged for murder after a tear-gas canister was tossed into a Chatsworth night club and 13 children died.

He was also the senior counsel briefed to compile Zuma's answers to 35 questions posed by the Scorpions in July 2003. Naidu is also known for his grilling of Gideon Nieuwoudt, a former security policeman, during Nieuwoudt's re-application for amnesty for the Motherwell bombings.

During his cross-examination by Naidu, Nieuwoudt had to resort to psychiatric treatment. But one must be cautious about thinking that Naidu is often to be found in the spotlight simply because he gets his kicks from publicity.

What drives him into the centre of the action seems more to be an insatiable curiosity and a mischievous joy at being in the thick of things - and playing a part in making it happen.

In the early 1970s Naidu obtained his BA Llb degree at the University of Durban-Westville, then received an Anglo American scholarship to read for a masters in law at London University. He was admitted as an advocate of the Natal provincial division of the supreme court (as it was known) in May 1977.

From then he practised as junior counsel in Durban until September 1994, when he was appointed as a senior counsel by former president Nelson Mandela.

During the apartheid days Naidu represented and advised a plethora of people detained under security legislation, represented anti-government organisations, and also appeared in court to try to winkle certain people out of detention.

Naidu was thus counsel for many activists who are now well-known politicians or former politicians. They included Penuell Maduna, the former minister of justice, and Makhenkesi Stofile, the minister of sport. He was also an executive member of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel), which played an important role in legal circles in the pre-1994 days.

Yet Naidu never talks of "the struggle", trades "war" stories, or drops the names of "important" people. Neither does he indulge in any populist or Africanist rhetoric.

So it takes many encounters with him before one becomes aware that hidden under Naidu's urbane and charming exterior is a cache of outrage at the ill-treatment, injustice and humiliation that used to be meted out to people of colour.

Naidu is too much of a professional law man to wear his heart on his sleeve. If one asks some people who they are, they might answer "I am an ANC member first, a father second, and a soccer player third".

Or "I am a human being first, a wife second, and a journalist third". With Naidu, one suspects his reply would be "I am a man of the law first, and everything else afterwards."

For Naidu is devoted to the legal fraternity and its work. It's clearly a matter of immense pride to him that he belongs to what is effectively a brotherhood that transcends border, nationality, creed and colour.

Like many experienced advocates, Naidu is also aware - as the late senior counsel Isie Maisels used to say - that a bad settlement is inevitably better than a good case.

It was Naidu who engineered an agreement between Ngcuka and French arms company Thomson-CSF. Thomson-CSF was originally charged with corruption, along with Shaik, because of the alleged involvement of one of its directors, Alain Thetard, in a bribe agreement ostensibly involving himself, Shaik and Zuma.

In terms of the agreement worked out by Naidu, Thomson-CSF was dropped from the charge sheet. As it turned out - given what Judge Hilary Squires's judgment said - Thomson-CSF must be thanking its lucky stars that Naidu did what he did.

Naidu, who is a devout Hindu (he is honourary legal adviser to the Rama Krishna centre of South Africa), spends as much time as he can swimming and pursuing water sports. "I savour the ecstasy of riding the Durban rollers with my four sons and daughter - no phone calls, just the cool blue," he said.

I asked the man who was appointed an acting judge in the Eastern Cape division of the high court in February and March 1995 and of the Natal provincial division in 1997, 2000 and 2003, who would foot Zuma's legal bills.

"Did I tell you about a swimming pool I recently discovered?" he replied - deftly avoiding the political roller.

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and The Sunday Independent.