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He’d been suffering from cancer, but his family told an eNCA reporter that he had not died of the disease.
SAPA quoted his family as saying on Saturday: "It is with deep sadness that we, the family of Dr Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, advise of his passing in the early hours of this morning, after a long and courageous battle with terminal lung cancer."
Ambrosini was so ill that he had been pushed in a wheelchair to take his oath of office before Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.
Earlier this year, during debate on President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address, the cancer-stricken Ambrosini made an impassioned plea to Zuma and his government to decriminalise the medical use of dagga.
"I'm
speaking to you today somehow as a changed man, not to oppose, but to
plead with you to provide the laws on behalf of many people in my
condition who do not have a voice."
Ambrosini admitted to illegally having smoked dagga in South Africa as an alternative treatment to his condition.
