(2018) 2 African Human Rights Yearbook 65 respect pre-existing international frontiers in the event of state succession derives from a general rule of international law, whether or not the rule is expressed in the formula of uti possidetis.50 In sum, it is submitted that the Commission neither applied its mind to the question of re-colonisation nor to the equally important one of acquisition of territory in international law, given the fanciful claim of Cameroun Republic to the territory of the Southern Cameroons. It did not direct its mind to the concept and nature of inalienable rights. It did not appreciate the fact that colonisation amounts to both oppression and domination. The Commission’s decision on the issue of self-determination was anchored neither in law, principle, or cogent argument. It did not rest on any evidence, forensic or even anecdotal. It was not grounded in any legal authority, be it case law, legal instrument, legal principle, or academic writing.51 4 TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY: STATE SYSTEM AND STABILITY Africa’s emphasis on the principle of territorial integrity stems from a compound of three inter-related principles that appear to characterise the continent’s attitude, namely, the long term goal of African ‘unity’; the intangibility of borders inherited from colonisation; and the primacy of the principle of territorial integrity over the right of selfdetermination, effectively ousting the applicability of selfdetermination in post-colonial Africa. 4.1 African ‘unity’ From the onset of the decolonisation process in Africa, Pan-Africanists strongly argued for the ‘unity’ of the African continent. For them, the ‘rectification’ of ‘arbitrary’ African borders was feasible and attainable. Unity and border rectification were considered goals that could be attained in the short term. But these goals were subsequently ‘revised’ to become long term objectives. Had African political unification been achieved, the matter of self-determination and the headache of border and territorial disputes would simply have become intra-African domestic matters of an administrative and constitutional nature. Strong opposition by a number of African states to immediate continental political integration led to a reconceptualisation of African unity in terms of what has variously been described as ‘gradualism’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘functional co-operation’ or ‘federalism without tears’ in the form of regional economic communities. The AU, successor to the OAU in 2002, has re-centred the desideratum of continental 50 51 Frontier Dispute 554. Anyangwe (n 32); D Shelton ‘Self-determination in regional human rights law: From Kosovo to Cameroon’ (2011) 105 American Journal of International Law 60 https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjintelaw.105.1.0060 (accessed 5 August 2018).