The Prince And I - A South African Institutional Odyssey (Hardcover)

The late Dr Ambrosini was an ltalian-American Constitutional Lawyer who arrived in South Africa on the cusp of South Africa’s Political Transition. He found himself drawn into the thick of constitutional negotiations, on behalf of the lFP, enabling him to play a significant role in shaping the country’s constitutional democracy.

Dr Ambrosini and Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi (The President of the INKATHA Freedom Party and Traditional Prime Minister to the Zulu Monarch and Nation) formed an unexpectedly close friendship. He was a young foreign national with no experience of Zulu culture or African politics. Yet he became champion and adviser to a Zulu Prince; a descendent of King Mpande (brother to King Shaka), Traditional Prime Minister to the Zulu Nation, and political leader to some two million South Africans.

Ambrosini made South Africa his home, as he provided legal, policy and institutional advice to Prince Buthelezi, supporting him in his roles as Minister of Home Affairs, Acting President of South Africa, Leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and traditional Prime Minister to the Zulu Monarch and Nation. Ambrosini’s extraordinary ability won him friends, and enemies, in very high places. Over the years he attracted numerous epithets, both in the media and intelligence reports; but in 2009 his adopted country embraced him fully, as he became a Member of the South African Parliament.

Tragically, it was from this position that he waged his final war. Ambrosini was diagnosed with final stage, inoperable lung cancer in April 2013.