70 Anyangwe/Right to self-determination under the African Charter It cannot be implicated in cases of the exercise of the right of selfdetermination against colonial rule, oppression, or expansionism. A colonial territory has a status separate and distinct from the territory of the colonial power. Self-determination and territorial integrity seem to be antinomies, involving a clash of norms: the unavoidable conflict between the efforts of peoples to achieve independence and the demands of existing states to preserve their territorial integrity.62 The competing values of human dignity and system stability seem to be pulling in opposite directions. However, a close analysis shows that there is a dynamic interplay of both norms. Sometimes they are mutually reinforcing as when selfdetermination is a function of the right to a distinct and clearly defined territory. In that situation, the right of self-determination protects the territory from impairment. Sometimes also both norms are antagonistic, as when a self-determination claim involves the break-up of the legitimate territory of a state. The interplay of both norms results in the primacy of self-determination over territorial integrity in certain situations, and the primacy of territorial integrity over selfdetermination in certain other situations. In some situations therefore human dignity trumps the demands of state system and state integrity; in some other situations the demands of state system and state integrity prevail over the demand of human dignity. The precise or exact circumstances in which one norm prevails over the other invites examination in the light of the provisions of the African Charter, the provisions of the AU Constitutive Act, and the African Commission’s jurisprudence on this subject. It is not clear which of the two competing powerful norms, selfdetermination or territorial integrity, necessarily prevails in all situations.63 Case-law authority on this point is lacking. But the postcolonial history of this continent teaches that such matters are ultimately decided by armed struggle rather than by forensic battles or even diplomacy. In the case of Biafra, despite the fact that there were massive human rights violations in the form of a pogrom committed against the aggrieved people, the principle of territorial integrity prevailed over what seemed a compelling case for remedial secession. In the case of South Sudan, the secessionist self-determination claim which was asserted through a combination of force and third party diplomatic intervention prevailed over the principle of Sudan’s territorial integrity trumpeted in Libya by the second African-Arab submit. Eritrea vindicated its right to self-determination by force of arms and the matter of Ethiopia’s territorial integrity hardly came in for consideration by intergovernmental political organisations. The Western Sahara followed the same path, although the territory is still 62 63 Shelton (n 51). V Gudeleviciute ‘Does the principle of self-determination prevail over the principle of territorial integrity?’ (2005) 2 The International Journal of Baltic Law 48; P Szasz ‘The irresistible force of self-determination meets the impregnable fortress of territorial integrity: a cautionary tale about clashes in Kosovo and elsewhere’ (2000) 38 Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law 493.