At the time, his junior attorney was Anton Lubowski who would later be murdered by the security police. During the case, another one of his junior attorneys was detained by the security branch police, so while Lubowski continued in Dordrecht, Chetty went to look for his colleague in Burgersdorp. However, the head of the prison at the time refused Chetty access to his junior. Chetty immediately sought to bring an application for the attorney's release but was met with an unsympathetic judge who was not interested in the legalities around the detention. The attorney spent the next six months in solitary confinement at Burgersdorp prison. 

He rose to the bench in 1995 after he was offered an opportunity by a peer to serve as an acting judge in Cape Town, a moment he said that took him aback. The following year his appointment became permanent and it was then his judicial education began in earnest, learning from the leading legal minds in the country.

Chetty told reporters that while serving on the bench in Cape Town he wrote most of his judgments in Afrikaans, as a show of his versatility with languages. 

Then, in 1998, Chetty had former President FW De Klerk as a litigant in his court. "I came face to face with the last architect of apartheid ... how was I to react? Well to a judiciary, he was a litigant coming to get divorced." 

"Well, Mr De Klerk got into the witness box, took the oath in front of me and I said to myself: 'How times have changed.' "

The last major case Chetty presided over was the Christopher Panayiotou murder trial in which he sentenced the businessman to life imprisonment for the murder of his schoolteacher wife Jayde. 

Chetty's career has spanned 47 years and his contribution is considered as instrumental in the nurturing and development of both civil and criminal law in South Africa.

And nearly half a century later, Chetty still writes his judgments using a pencil and a rubber and told reporters that he does not use technology, preferring to remain old school. 

"Law is the business to which I have devoted my entire life," he said. "I've spent the last 47 years trying to learn it, still haven't accomplished it fully, but I think it's time I want to stop studying because I also need to relax and spend time with my family."

Chetty will officially leave the bench as a Port Elizabeth High Court Judge in September. 

African News Agency/ANA