252 Mizan Law Review Vol. 6 No.2, December 2012 SADC Tribunal ‘clearly covers human rights issues, including the interpretation and application of the African Charter.’78 The Tribunal seems to have concurred with this view in the Campbell case. It “first referred to Article 21(b) which, in addition to enjoining the Tribunal to develop its own jurisprudence, also instructs the Tribunal to do so ‘having regard to applicable treaties, general principles and rules of public international law’ which are sources of law for the Tribunal”. 79 In this holding, the Tribunal made it clear that its sources of law are not limited to SADC instruments. Rather, the Tribunal situated itself in a position similar to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.80 Thus, the African Charter and other treaties are sources of law for the SADC Tribunal. Campbell and other cases brought against zimbabwe seem to have boomeranged on the very existence of the SADC Tribunal. Because of the Tribunal’s holding in that case, Zimbabwe questioned the legality of the SADC Tribunal.81 As a result, the SADC Summit first refused to fill vacancies on the Tribunal and subsequently suspended the Tribunal at the 2010 SADC Summit.82 83 Although the Summit has the power to amend SADC Treaty, the procedure it followed in suspending the Tribunal was ultra vires8 Tribunal’ in George Mukundi Wachira (ed) (2007), Judiciary Watch Report: Regional and Sub-regional Platforms for Vindicating Human Rights in Africa (Nirobi: Kenyan Section of International Commission of Jurists), p. 39. Mooki concluded that the use of treaties which promotes and protects human rights by the SADC Tribunal is inevitable. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu ‘Complementarity, Competition or Contradiction: The Relationship between the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Regional Economic Courts in East and Southern Africa’ (Unpublished) (Presentation to Conference of East and Southern African States on the Protocol Establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Gaborone, Botswana, 9-10 December 2003) at <http://www.africancourtcoalition.org/images/docs/researchpapers/chidioncomplementarity.pdf> (accessed on 13 November 2011). 78 Odinkalu, Ibid, p. 9. 79 Campbell case, supra note 75, para 31. 80 Compare Art 7, Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the establishment of an African Court on Human and People's Rights, adopted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 10 June 1998, OAU DOC. OAU/LEG/EXP/AFCHPR/PROT (III). Art 7 empowers the African Court to apply the provisions of the African Charter and any other relevant human rights instruments ratified by the States concerned. 81 Viljoen (2012), supra note 40, p. 556. 82 Ibid; Solomon T Ebobrah (2012), ‘Human rights developments in African sub­ regional economic communities during 2011’ 12 African Journal of Human Rights Law 223, Vol. 12, p. 225. 83 ‘SADC Tribunal Dissolved by Unanimous Decision of SADC Leaders’, Speech by Ariranga G. Pillay, Former President of SADC Tribunal, available at