The Times Editorial: President Jacob Zuma continues to express optimism about the negotiation process in Zimbabwe, telling Parliament this week that ''some achievements have been registered''.

Zuma, the Southern African Development Community's chief mediator on Zimbabwe, said that country's political rivals had agreed to establish a human rights commission, an electoral commission and a media commission, and that the commissioners - who were respected by most Zimbabweans - had been sworn in.

President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF, the Movement for Democratic Change led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and a breakaway faction of the MDC had also agreed on an equitable model for the sharing of the nine provincial governorships.

Zuma noted that a multiparty team had been set up to lobby Western governments to drop sanctions targeting Mugabe and his acolytes. Further, the parties were considering proposals to resolve other obstacles bedevilling the troubled unity government.

A big stumbling block had already been removed, Zuma told MPs, with the acquittal on [highly questionable] terror charges of MDC treasurer Roy Bennett. The farmer has yet to be sworn in as deputy agriculture minister - eight months after he was nominated.

But as has happened so often in the past, powerful members of the Zanu-PF elite were already conspiring to make sure that Zimbabwe's new struggle for democracy truly is a case of ''one step forward, one step back''.

First, secretary for security Emmerson Mnangagwa said Mugabe was under no obligation to appoint Bennett, then prosecutors said they would appeal the acquittal.

The law should be allowed to take its course, but there's a bigger picture here: Zuma and the SADC cannot stand by while the promise of free, multiparty elections evaporates.