A month before South Africa’s national elections, it has emerged that the National Prosecuting Authority is considering abandoning its anti-corruption case against Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress leader. Leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance Helen Zille has suggested that Zuma may be pressuring the prosecutor's office to drop the charges in exchange for an undertaking that he would refrain from purging the office after he is elected national president. Of all the options open to Zuma – appealing to the constitutional court, fighting the charges in the lower courts, passing an Italian-style immunity law or sacking the prosecutors when he is president – persuading the prosecutors to drop the charges before the election is the neatest solution for him. Without such a deal, he would face multiple corruption charges and have to pack his first cabinet with ultra-loyalists to protect him. If the deal works, he could draw his ministers from wider pool of talent. He may also feel less pressure to appoint allies such as former Limpopo Premier Ngoako Ramathlodi or Durban lawyer, Muzi Mkhize as the new director of the prosecutor’s office. However, Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, no stranger to legal controversy himself, said Zuma should prove his innocence in court because of perceptions that ‘political exigencies may have overtaken the rule of law’. And for once many South Africans will agree with him.