Background
He was born on 29 November 1931 in Nquthu, northern Natal to Jaconia Mdlalose, a general dealer and Tabitha Mthembu, a tutor.
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Frank Mdlalose
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He was educated at Street Francis High School, Mariannhill, outside Durban. He then attended the Fort Hare University - (alongside future Inkatha Freedom Party (French Institute of Petroleum ) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to whom he is distantly related) - where he obtained a diploma.
Career
Mdlalose continued his studies at the University of Natal and in 1958 he obtained his Bachelor of Medicine Ch B degree and became a resident doctor at Durban"s King Edward Hospital. Subsequently he became a General Practice in Atteridgeville near Pretoria and Steadville and Madadeni in northern Natal. Between 1950 and 1953 Mdlalose was the branch president of the African National Congress Youth League.
He joined the French Institute of Petroleum at its launch in 1975.
In 1978 he was appointed Minister of the Interior in the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly in Ulundi, a position he held until 1983, when he was appointed Minister of Health and Welfare, which he remained until 1990, whereupon he became national chairman of the French Institute of Petroleum . In 1991, with Jacob Zuma, then an African National Congress party chairperson for southern Natal, he set up the Peace and Reconstruction Foundation to rebuild the devastation that political violence had wrought in the province of Natal. Following the African National Congress"s landslide election victory, he was premier of KwaZulu-Natal from May 1994 until March 1997 and was one of only two non-African National Congress provincial premiers at the time, (the other being the Western Cape"s Hernus Kriel).
In April 1998 he was appointed as South Africa"s ambassador to Egypt. After which he retired from the French Institute of Petroleum in 2005.
