Jean-Jacques Cornish

Ramaphosa uses Africa Day to illicit support for South Africa’s UN Security Council membership

Hosting a lunch for the diplomatic corps in Pretoria commemorating the formation in 1963 of the Organisation of African Unity, President Cyril Ramaphosa seeks international support  for South Africa to become a rotating member of the United Nations Security Council next year.

Ramaphosa  also takes an oblique swipe at US President Donald Trump scrapping the nuclear deal with Iran.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says he’s humbled by the African nomination for democratic South Africa to have a third term as a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council in 2019 and 2020.

But he reminds the more than 100 envoys assembled at the presidential guest house that this will require a vote in the UN General Assembly next month and he asks for the strong and lasting support of their countries.

Ramaphosa says South Africa will use its membership of the 15-nation UN powerhouse – as it has on the two previous terms it served there – to further peace and security globally  and more specifically in Africa where most of the world’s conflicts are located.

He reiterates South Africa’s strong commitment to multilateralism with the United Nations at its centre and expresses satisfaction at the G20 foreign ministers underlining this at their meeting in Buenos Aires this week.

Without mentioning his US counterpart Donald Trump by name , Ramaphosa expresses concern about the threat to the rules based system posed by the unilateral revocation of binding international agreements.

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Jean-Jacques Cornish is a journalist and broadcaster who has been involved in the media all his adult life.

Starting as a reporter on his hometown newspaper, he moved briefly to then Rhodesia before returning to South Africa to become a parliamentary correspondent with the South African Press Association. He was sent to London as Sapa’s London editor and also served as special correspondent to the United Nations. He joined the then Argus group in London as political correspondent.

Returning to South Africa after 12 years abroad, he was assistant editor on the Pretoria News for a decade before becoming editor of the Star and SA Times for five years.

Since 1999 he’s been an independent journalist writing and broadcasting – mainly about Africa – for Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape
Talk, Radio France International, PressTV, Radio Live New Zealand, Business Day, Mail & Guardian, the BBC, Agence France Press,
Business in Africa, Leadership, India Today, the South African Institute for International Affairs and the Institute for Security Studies.

He has hosted current affairs talk shows on Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape Talk. He appears as an African affairs pundit on SABC Africa and CNBC Africa.
He lectured in contemporary studies to journalism students at the Tshwane University of Technology and the University of Pretoria.

He speaks on African affairs to corporate and other audiences.
He has been officially invited as a journalist to more than 30 countries. He was the winner of the 2007 SADC award for radio journalism.

He’s been a member of the EISA team observing elections in Somaliland, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Tunsiai.

In October 2009 he headed a group of 39 African journalists to the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Peoples’ Republic of China.

In January 2010 he joined a rescue and paramedical team to earthquake struck Haiti.

He is immediate past president of the Alliance Francaise of Pretoria.

Jean-Jacques is a director of Giant Media. The company was given access to Nelson Mandela in his retirement years until 2009.
He is co-producer of the hour-long documentary Mandela at 90 that was broadcast on BBC in January 2009.