Jacob Zuma will not go on trial for corruption, fraud and other criminal charges until he is president of the country.
And it might even be deep into his first term before he has to take a seat in the dock.
"Given the agreements reached by all the parties concerned at our Thursday meeting with Vuka Tshabalala, the judge president of KwaZulu-Natal, I can't see a criminal trial taking place before 2010," Michael Hulley, Zuma's attorney, told Weekend Argus day.
Present at Thursday's meeting were Judge Tshabalala; Billy Downer SC and Anton Steynberg of the National Prosecuting Authority, who handled the NPA case against Schabir Shaik and who are prosecuting the state case against Zuma; Kemp J Kemp SC and Hulley of Zuma's legal team; and Ajay Sooklal, attorney for Thint, the local arm of the French arms manufacturer and dealer, charged alongside Zuma in the indictment served on the ANC president in December.
The meeting followed the revelation last week that the NPA, although it had said publicly that Zuma was due to appear in court on August 4, had not properly arranged for the trial with Judge Tshabalala.
Although Judge Tshabalala later publicly distanced himself from any "mess-up" on the part of the NPA, it is reliably understood that at Thursday's meeting the judge president made it abundantly clear the NPA's argument that it had made a public statement about the proposed date for Zuma's trial and also copied all relevant documents to the registrar of the high court in Pietermartizburg was unacceptable.
"A high-profile case such as Mr Zuma's requires many court days and therefore careful arrangements are required by me. The registrar's office is not my office, and I cannot run the courts according to what I read in the newspapers. It is the correct protocol to consult me directly," Judge Tshabalala told Downer and Steynberg.
In any case, Zuma's representatives told the meeting they would be applying for a review of the case against the ANC leader on the basis that neither he nor Thint was asked for a response to the charges laid against them and because the charges were not reviewed by the NPA - not in 2005 when they were charged following the guilty verdict in the trial of Shaik and not in December when they were charged again because the 2005 trial was struck off the roll.
The defence teams will argue that an accused person's right to a review if charged again is protected by the Constitution and that, if charged again, an accused person should be allowed to respond to charges to the NPA before going to court.
If the court finds in Zuma and Thint's favour the NPA's decision to charge could be declared unlawful.
It was agreed at the meeting that Zuma's legal team would put in papers on the "review application" in the next few months, that the state would respond to these, and that the matter will start being heard on August 4.
The criminal trial will be adjourned on August 4 to December 8, when a criminal trial date will be set - possibly for some time late next year but this would depend on what has happened in the "review application" matter.
One of the many potentially embarrassing issues that will be raised by the defence teams in the "review application" case is related to the official 2003 decision by Penuell Maduna, then minister of justice, and Bulelani Ngcuka, then national director of public prosecutions, not to prosecute Zuma and to sign a legal agreement with Thint that it would not be prosecuted.