At the time of this interview, Mario Gaspare Oriani-Ambrosini was a member of the South African Parliament in the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). He served on committees that dealt with public enterprises, economic development, trade and industry, and justice and constitutional development.  He was also a part of the Finance and Rules, Private Member Bills and the Constitutional Review Joint Committee. The Italian-born lawyer was trained at the Georgetown University Law Center in the U.S. He worked with the Philadelphia Constitution Foundation and Human Rights Advocates International in negotiating, drafting and formulating constitutions for a wide range of clients that included the Boris Yeltsin Commission in Russia. In 1991, he started working for Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and his political party, the IFP. He became Buthelezi’s adviser from 1994 to 2004, the period when the prince was the minister of home affairs. Oriani-Ambrosini was also an adviser to the leader of the minority political party in Nelson Mandela's Government of National Unity. He was involved in reformulating the South African immigration system, formulating the second constitution that was produced by the Constitutional Assembly and drafting the constitution of KwaZulu-Natal in 1995. He retired from politics in 2004, but in 2009 he returned. Besides engaging in politics and constitutional law, Oriani-Ambrosini also worked as a commercial lawyer and businessman. In 2004, he reopened Ambrosini & Associates, a legal and business consultancy in the U.S.