In a judgment written by Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, the court affirmed unanimously that section 179(4) of the Constitution provided for the independence of the National Prosecuting Authority.

It therefore held that sections of the National Prosecuting Authority Act, 1998 were unconstitutional insofar as they granted the President discretion over certain aspects of senior prosecutors' terms of employment, thereby compromising prosecutorial independence.

The two applications were consolidated and heard in the High Court in November 2017, and they were granted the following month: the Pretoria bench, led by Judge President Dunstan Mlambo, found that Nxasana's settlement payment and vacation of office were unconstitutional, as were sections 12(4) and 12(6) of the NPA Act.

In an extraordinarily intrusive order, the court also agreed with the applicants that the criminal corruption charges against Zuma created a conflict of interest which made it untenable for him to make decisions about the appointment, suspension, or removal of the NDPP; the court ruled that those powers would be vested, for the rest of Zuma's term, in Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was instructed to appoint a new NDPP to replace Abrahams.

In a majority judgment written by Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, the court held that those provisions, in granting the President certain discretionary powers, threatened the independence of the NDPP's office: while an indefinite suspension could be used to punish non-compliant directors, a term extension (as a perceived benefit)[6] could be used to reward compliant ones.

Indeed, Madlanga's judgment was notable primarily for its strong statement on the requirement of prosecutorial independence, which it said was grounded in section 179(4) of the Constitution and buttressed by various institutional protections in the NPA Act.

In this it diverted from the default legal position outlined in Steenkamp v Edcon Limited,[9] which entailed that, with the improper conduct having been nullified, the proper remedy was to restore the status quo ante.