African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma’s lawyers and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) have not agreed on a date for his corruption trial, Business Day was told yesterday.

This means the chances of Zuma going to trial this year are slim.

Agreement between the NPA and Zuma’s legal team was reached on a timetable for Zuma’s Constitutional Court appeal against the Supreme Court of Appeal’s judgment, which saw corruption charges against him being reinstated, and Zuma’s application for a permanent stay of prosecution.

Zuma will appear before Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Leona Theron today, when a date for an application for a stay of prosecution in August will be formalised.

Zuma’s lawyers and the NPA had been “in discussion” on dates for court appearances for weeks since the restoration of corruption charges after Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Louis Harms overturned Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Chris Nicholson’s setting aside of acting national director of public prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe’s decision to prosecute Zuma.

NPA spokesman Tlali Tlali would not say what was agreed with Zuma’s legal team. Zuma’s lawyers filed an appeal in the Constitutional Court yesterday, a day after the deadline.

The issue before the Constitutional Court is whether Zuma had the right to be invited to make representations to the NPA before it decided to prosecute him. Nicholson found that he did, while Harms found that he did not.

Should Zuma succeed in his Constitutional Court appeal, the decision to charge him would again be set aside. But this would not necessarily be an end to the case because, as Nicholson said, the NPA could simply decide to charge him again after taking representations. If Zuma gets a permanent stay of prosecution it would put an end to his trial once and for all.

Finally, there are the “representations” that Zuma has indicated he wished to make to the NPA to convince it not to charge him.

Last week Tlali said Zuma had not committed to a future date to make representations.

If he fails at the Constitutional Court and in his application to stay the prosecution, or if the representations come to nothing, Zuma will probably face trial while president of SA.

With acknowledgements to Franny Rabkin and Business Day.