(2018) 2 African Human Rights Yearbook 55 ‘unquestionable and inalienable’. It is both a procedural and a substantive right. By contrast, the right to freedom from domination inures to and is exercisable by a specific category of people only, that is, those who either are colonised or are oppressed. A colonised or an oppressed people, whatever the source of that colonisation or oppression, are necessarily a dominated people and entitled to free themselves from the bonds of domination by resorting to any means recognised by the international community. The right to assistance from third states entails a corresponding obligation on states parties to the Charter to assist a people waging a ‘liberation struggle against foreign domination’. The self-determination clauses in the African Charter are thus broader and more forceful than in both the ICCPR and ICESCR. The state obligation under the Charter is absolute, immediate and nonderogable. Article 19 enunciates the fundamental postulate that ‘nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another’ while article 20(1) posits that self-determination is ‘unquestionable and inalienable’. It follows that the political domination of a people by another people whether from within or from without, cannot possibly be justified. Self-determination may be claimed by any people dominated by another, whether or not in a colonial setting. It is relevant in cases of gross or severe human rights violations such as systematic discrimination, domination, persecution or oppression by a state against a particular community of people distinguished from the rest of the population on say ethnic, cultural or some other relevant grounds. It is also relevant in situations of re-colonisation in one form or another. In Kevin Mgwang Gumne et al v Cameroon, the Commission recognised that post-colonial Africa has not been free of domination, although it went on to say, without any elaboration, that domination does not constitute colonialism ‘in the classic sense’.22 The exercise of the right of self-determination under the African Charter is constrained first by the equally important principle of territorial integrity, and second by the conservative and timorous interpretation of that norm by the African Commission. African instruments acknowledge and proclaim the right to selfdetermination.23 But African states and the Commission are reluctant to uphold it in the post-colonial setting. They appear to have adopted the attitude that with the end of white colonisation and domination in Africa, self-determination became spent and unavailable. This suspect attitude focuses on the state-centred territorial dimension of selfdetermination. It ignores the phenomena of black-on-black colonialism and neo-colonialism that have since emerged in some parts of the continent. The end of white colonisation did not mean that all forms of colonialism were thereby eradicated. A number of continental 22 23 (2009) AHRLR 9 (ACHPR 2009) (Gumne) para 181. By this logic, contemporary forms of slavery should also be ignored because they are not slavery ‘in the classical sense’. Including the African Charter, the OAU Convention on the prevention and combating of terrorism and the Protocol to the OAU Convention on the prevention and combating of terrorism.