Mario Oriani-Ambrosini

On 19 February 2014 Oriani-Ambrosini stood up in the SA National Assembly and introduced a private members bill to decriminalise the medical use of cannabis. The Medical Innovation Bill, is "to make provision for innovation in medical treatment and to legalise the use of cannibanoids for medical purpose and beneficial commercial industrial uses".

Mario Oriani-Ambrosini died in 2014, slightly over a year after publicly disclosing that he had Stage 4 lung cancer.

Oriani-Ambrosini maintained his legal practice in the US, albeit remotely, as well as a standing political association with the US libertarian movement. In 2013 he became a partner in the South African office of Translink, a Swiss-based international corporate finance firm specializing in mergers and acquisition with 30 offices worldwide.

He became a Member of the National Assembly of South Africa in May 2009 where he served on the following Committees: Trade and Industry, Public Enterprises, Economic Development, Justice and Constitutional Development Portfolio, Finance and Rules, Private Members Bills and the Constitutional Review Joint Committees.

Oriani-Ambrosini left the South African Government in May 2004 to reopen his Washington, D.C. office and establish Ambrosini & Associates a legal and business consultancy. He established Promethea Corporation, a philanthropic company which manufactured safe kerosene cookers in Vietnam and distributed them in Africa to replace unsafe versions used by millions of people. While focusing on rebuilding his legal practice and setting up business ventures in China, Vietnam, Europe and South Africa, Oriani-Ambrosini continued to advise Buthelezi on policy and institutional matters. During this period, he drafted the IFP's proposed 2005 Constitution for KwaZulu Natal, Buthelezi's constitutional amendments Bill to separate the offices of Head of State and Head of Government and several other policy documents. He also participated in the 4th World Parliamentary Convention on Tibet and directed successful public interest constitutional litigation.

He assisted Blaustein in a graduate seminar on constitution's drafting and became the Vice President of the Philadelphia Foundation and the public-advocacy UN-accredited law-firm Human Rights Advocates International, both presided over by Blaustein. He engaged in constitutional negotiation, lobbying, and public interest litigation in respect of Nicaragua (electoral law), the Russian Federation (preparation of the first draft constitution), Canada (position of Indian tribes in the national constitution and the tribes' own constitutions), Uganda, Fiji (constitution drafting), Romania (representing Alliancia Civica), Poland, Rom Nation, Italy (constitutional reports), the Moluccan Nation (Government in exile), Macedonia (representing VMRO), Cuba (shadow Government), Tibet (Government in Exile), proposed State of Humania, Seychelles (constitutional advisor to Sir James Mancham) and Zaire (Advisor to Paramount Chief Logotongo III). L He also acted as a legal advisor to the Rehoboth Basters of Namibia with respect to land claims and regional autonomy, and the Afrikaner cultural institutions known as "Cultura 2000" in the first challenge on the constitutionality of a law, and in the challenge to single medium-of-instruction education. Oriani-Ambrosini also collaborated on the upkeep of the Blaunstein's 60+ volume collections of "The Constitutions of the World", and "Constitutions of Dependencies and Territories".

Oriani-Ambrosini is acknowledged as being the main, if not the sole, architect of the South African immigration reform process from 1996 to 2004. He was appointed by Buthelezi as a Member of the task force formulating the new South African immigration policy where he became the drafter of both the policy and the new legislation. He was also responsible for piloting the legislation through NEDLAC and Parliament, acting as the Ministers spokesperson in this often controversial process. He then drafted the interim immigration regulations and piloted the subsequent process of consultations for the final regulations.

During his ten years in the South African government, Oriani-Ambrosini's responsibilities were not limited to Home Affairs. In that period he advised the Province of KwaZulu Natal, including negotiating and drafting the 1996 provincial Constitution of KwaZulu Natal, a number of pieces of legislation adopted by the provincial legislature and several of the province's constitutional litigations. With Director General R. Sizani, he spearheaded the legal and administrative implementation of KwaZulu Natal's historical defiance of President's Thabo Mbeki's dictate that no lifesaving-antiretroviral drugs were to be given within the public system to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV-AIDS. He also advised the Coalition of Traditional Leaders and precursory groupings of traditional leaders and partook in all major activities of the governing and policy making bodies of the IFP, including re-drafting most of the Party's constitution and supporting all the IFP's annual party conferences. Throughout this period, Oriani-Ambrosini partook in high-level and State trips to Germany, Canada, Russia, the United Kingdom, Israel, Morocco, Italy, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, the United States, Portugal, France and Bulgaria, and was member of the Government of South Africa's delegation at three high-level United Nations conferences as well as numerous international visits and conventions.

For three years Oriani-Ambrosini worked full-time as the chief constitutional negotiator for the IFP and the erstwhile KwaZulu Government, and was involved in all stages and phases of the negotiation from its beginning to the end of pre-election negotiations, including the entire drafting of the 1994 interim Constitution. He played a key role in the international mediation effort led by Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington and the negotiation of the Agreement for Reconciliation and Peace which enabled an all-inclusive democratic election in 1994. as well as the finalization of the South African Constitution.

In 1991 he began what would become a life-changing relationship with Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi. In December 1990, he acted as the legal advisor for the Inkatha Freedom Party at the opening of CODESA, the two-year-long South African constitutional negotiations from apartheid to democracy. In June 1992, he sat with Buthelezi at the meeting of the UN Security Council in a meeting called by Nelson Mandela to push forward the transition to democracy. In November 1992 he drafted the Constitution of KwaZulu/Natal which was unanimously adopted by the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly as the constitution of a member state of a federation to be formed in the national negotiation process. This was the first detailed constitutional draft or proposal in the South African constitution-making process and in that process, helped to advance civil liberties such as abortion, gay rights and a ban on the death penalty, as well as second and third generation human rights which until that point were not part of the South African constitutional discourse.

After winning a Fulbright scholarship, Oriani-Ambrosini relocated to the United States to specialize in constitutional law and international financial and commercial law. In 1986, he became the right-hand man of Rutgers University law professor, Albert Blaustein, an international constitutional consultant who participated in the writing of over 30 constitutions worldwide.

Mario Gaspare R. Oriani-Ambrosini (October 26, 1960 – August 16, 2014) was an Italian constitutional lawyer and politician who was a Member of Parliament in South Africa with the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Oriani-Ambrosini was born in Rome in 1960. He was the son of Columbia University trained constitutional law professor and international lawyer Raffaele Oriani, who died in 1971, at 39.