There was big, though somewhat underreported, news out of Zimbabwe today. Roy Bennett, an opposition leader jailed for bogus terrorism charges, was just acquitted by a high court in Harare. I’ve written about Bennett before–and his persecution by a malevolent Mugabe government–pointing out that the government’s case was beyond absurd. His imprisonment nearly gridlocked power-sharing proceedings between Mugabe’s ruling party and Bennett’s Movement for Democratic Change, unnecessarily holding up economic and social reforms that were desperately needed.

Though Zimbabwe’s population is still anguishing under Mugabe’s brutal, totalitarian regime, there’s some cause for optimism here. For the first time in years, Zimbabwe’s courts have demonstrated a degree of autonomy — ruling against the government in a major, highly publicized case. Add to this the fact that an enormous hurdle to the aforementioned reforms has been lifted, somewhat easing tensions between the feuding political parties.