In a letter to prosecutor Anton Steynberg last week , Tshabalala said: "While you allege that the matter was set down for August 4 2008, no arrangement was made with me and I have not had any contact with your office in this regard." Tshabalala also said it was clear that "the date which you allocated was not by agreement with the other parties to the litigation".

The parties will meet Tshabalala on Thursday to agree on another date. After Zuma's corruption trial was struck off the roll in September 2006, the prosecuting authority indicated it would put the case back on the roll. A case may, in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act, be struck off the roll for unreasonable delays by the state. However, the state is then entitled to reinsert the matter back onto the roll.

The prosecution did this on December 28 last year, when a summons and an indictment were served on Zuma. The warrant said that the trial date was between August 4 and 12. Mike Hellens, a senior counsel at the Johannesburg Bar, said that in practice , court dates for criminal trials in the high court were determined by the prosecutors. The procedure is that the deputy judge president, in consultation with the judge president, will make a number of judges available for criminal trials in a given court term.

The prosecuting authority will name one of the prosecutors as "roll-planner", who will then decide, based on the number of available judges , when to fit in all the trials and before which judges. But even in run-of-the-mill cases, Hellens said, any accused person may go to court on the day set down for his trial and argue that he is not ready to go to trial. This is because "courts are very aware that an accused person is entitled to a fair trial". If it is reasonable to delay the trial for the accused, a court will normally do so.

However, Hellens said the judge president may, at any time, intervene. Tshabalala said that "in a case like this", the NPA should have consulted his office. French arms company Thint, which is charged together with Zuma and would answer to the counts of racketeering and corruption, wrote a letter to Steynberg on Sunday and said there had been no agreement on the proposed trial date and that their lawyers were not ready for trial on August 4.

This was because they were occupied with a case before the Mauritius Supreme Court, and had been busy with Constitutional Court challenge against the search and seizure warrants delivered on Zuma. Thint's lawyers were also of the view that the Constitutional Court judgment on the constitutionality of the warrants used to search the offices of Thint was imminently relevant.

The matter was heard in March and the court reserved judgment. It appears that Thint's lawyers are pinning their hopes on the Constitutional Court finding that the warrants were unconstitutional and therefore would be inadmissible in the criminal trial. If the court ruled in favour of Zuma and Thint, the state would have to amend its indictment drastically in order to remove any documents obtained from the warrants.

The state would need time to amend the indictments. "Any decision taken prior to that judgment will be premature," Thint's lawyer, Ajay Sooklal, argued in the letter. Sooklal said it was not sure whether it was appropriate to consider some of the contents of the report considering the challenge to the searches and the state's possession of some of the documents that were still in dispute.

Jacob Zuma's prosecution timeline

August 2003. Scorpions lay charges of corrup tion and fraud against Zuma's financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. But Bulelani Ngcuka, national director of public prosecutions at the time, de cides not to charge Zuma, despite a "prima fa cie case" against him.

June 2005. Shaik is sentenced to 15 years for fraud and corruption. He was found to have made corrupt payments to Zuma and to have arranged a R500000-a-year bribe for Zuma from French arms company Thint.

June 2005. President Thabo Mbeki dismisses Zuma as deputy president , two weeks after Shaik's conviction. Zuma is later charged with two counts of corruption.

August 2005. The Scorpions raid the homes and offices of Zuma, his lawyers and his asso ciates. The unit believes the documents will help in their case against Zuma.

February 2006. The Durban High Court sets aside search warrants pertaining to Zuma's of fices and homes and the Durban offices of Zu ma's lawyer, Michael Hulley.

September 2006. The state asks for a post ponement in the Pietermaritzburg High Court where Zuma was due to appear on corruption charges. The court refuses and the case is struck off the roll.

November 2007. The Supreme Court of Ap peal upholds an appeal by the state concern ing the warrants and searches at Zuma and Hulley's houses and offices.

The court also dismisses Zuma's appeal against a letter of request granted by the Dur ban High Court to Mauritian authorities. The prosecution wants the Mauritian officials to re lease originals of 14 documents, including the diary of former French arms official Alain Thetard, in which an alleged entry indicated he had a meeting with Zuma and Shaik in 2000, where a R500000 bribe for Zuma was dis cussed.

December 28 2007. Zuma is recharged with racketeering and corruption.

March 2008. Zuma, Hulley and Thint appeal to the Constitutional Court against the search and seizure warrants. August 2008?

Franny Rabkin and Ernest Mabuza