"A really nice guy" with a genius mind and an unshakable "sense of right and wrong" is how friends describe Willie Hofmeyr, the half-Afrikaans stalwart of the liberation struggle now at the cutting edge of a possible deal to clear the name of Jacob Zuma.

In the high office of the Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions since 2001, Hofmeyr is said to be the person who has for months been conducting negotiations over attempts by Zuma's lawyers and the ANC to get a stay of the corruption charges.

This has not gone down well with some of the prosecutors who fear their eight years of hard work will go down an expedient political drain.

Some have even perceived him to be the tail that wags the dog, the latter being acting NDPP Mokotedi Mpshe who on Friday started the unenviable task of weighing up submissions to make a final determination on whether Zuma will spend more time in court than in the Union Buildings.

A close friend from the 1980s who together with Hofmeyr spent much of his time eluding security police said on Friday: "His integrity is beyond question. He is the most extraordinary, committed, hardworking and clever person I have met in my life."

An example of this tenacious commitment was Hofmeyr's 20-odd day hunger strike during one of a series of detentions amid the 1980s State of Emergency. He held out after everyone else gave up.

In the 1970s, Hofmeyr who grew up in a progressive household in Mowbray, became involved in the trade union movement while studying economics at the University of Cape Town, where he was also a member of Nusas.

This involvement led to a banning order that was only lifted seven years later.

Meanwhile, he started studying law part-time, while getting involved with the mass democratic movement in the Western Cape and later the United Democratic Front, shortly after it was unbanned.

In 1991, Hofmeyr was chosen as an executive member of the provincial ANC.

Many will remember Hofmeyr as the busy bee who virtually kept the ANC's Woodstock office together in the early 1990s, while doubling up as a media spokesperson along with his future spouse Sue de Villiers.

On his current high stakes peacemaking role, friends said: "It is in his nature, I think Willie is committed, he believes strongly in right and wrong. He is not a person to compromise his principles at all."

Their expectation is thus that their friend won't sell out the Constitution by giving Zuma preferential treatment no matter what the stakes.

He was after all party to the decision in 2007 to re-charge Zuma just days after he trumped Mbeki at the ANC's Polokwane conference.

He was also the man who swooped on the assets of Schabir Shaik, who had been jailed for allegedly facilitating a bribe for Zuma. Some of the money - R5 million - was last year returned to Shaik to avoid a costly legal battle.

Hofmeyr is highly regarded by Zuma's legal team who has said he brought "calmness and equanimity" to the acrimonious efforts by the ANC and Zuma's lawyers to make special representations to the NPA.

As ANC MP from 1994 and a member of Parliament's justice committee and its former Constitutional Review Committee, he was pivotal in researching and shaping the enabling legislation for the NPA, which he joined in 2001, as head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit and deputy NDPP.

Later he was given the additional responsibility of the Special Investigating Unit, which he took over from Judge Willem Heath who is now one of Zuma's legal advisors.

More recently, Hofmeyr also had the burden of facilitating the Scorpions' demise and integration into the police amidst huge internal trauma. Sources say he is the front-runner to lead the new priority crime unit in the police to replace the Scorpions.

News that part of Zuma's legal submissions to Hofmeyr included a series of potentially embarrassing tapped conversations of questionable origin, amongst others between former President Thabo Mbeki and former Scorpions boss, Leonard McCarthy, broke last week. Zuma's legal submission is apparently pushing the alleged recordings in order to provide substance to the ANC president's claims of a political conspiracy behind his prosecution.

The behind-the-scenes talks remain secret, but the latest information suggests Hofmeyr and a colleague travelled to Durban recently to listen to the recordings in Zuma's lawyers office, a potential conflict of interest as it was allegedly made by intelligence officers who may have listened in to his and his colleagues' calls.

Should Zuma be let off the hook through the current process, many South Africans may want to cast Hofmeyr as a villain. But friends insist there is no chance of an undue compromise. "He is a nice guy, a decent caring person, and phenomenally bright to the point of genius."

• This article was originally published on page 6 of The Cape Argus on March 28, 2009