Jani Allan

Jani Allan (11 September 1952 – 25 July 2023) was a South African journalist, columnist, writer, broadcaster, and a media celebrity.

In 1975 she was a finalist in the 1975 Miss South Africa competition, and her photographs were published by the Sunday Times.

Allan's first published work was a series of classical music reviews for The Citizen.

In 1980, Allan became a columnist for the centrist newspaper, the Sunday Times, South Africa's biggest-circulating weekly newspaper.

She published columns such as Just Jani, Jani Allan's Week, and Face to Face.

In 1980, Allan was employed by editor Tertius Myburgh to write a column for the Sunday Times, then the nation's biggest-circulating weekly newspaper.

Later, in the main body of the Sunday Times newspaper, she also began publishing Radio Jani, her music reviews.

She also had a nightly pop news spot on the David Gresham show on Springbok Radio.

In 1986 she began publishing Jani Allan's Week in the main newspaper.

She would report on parties hosted by South Africa's elite and continue to interview famous figures.

A year later Allan was in Mauritius covering the Marlin fishing when the Helderberg South African Airways Flight 295 crashed east of the island.

The newspaper commissioned a Gallup poll in 1987 to find "the most admired person in South Africa" and she came first.

Allan left South Africa when her apartment was bombed by the far right in 1989.

Allan sued and won damages from two British publications that repeated the affair allegations.

She filed a libel suit against Channel 4 over Nick Broomfield's documentary, The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife.

Broomfield denied raising affair allegations and a team of witnesses was flown in from South Africa to support both sides.

Allan lost the suit, with the judge declining to state that anyone had lied in court.

After a brief stint working at her newspaper's London bureau, she began writing freelance columns for British publications and published a regular column for Scope.

She returned to South Africa in 1996, publishing a sponsored web column and presenting a radio show on Cape Talk.

Allan lived in the United States since 2001 until her death from cancer in 2023.

Allan was adopted by a wealthy British-South African couple, John Murray Allan and Janet Sophia Henning, at the age of one month.

Allan's adoptive father, a former sub-editor of the Johannesburg daily The Star, died when she was 18 months old.

Her mother was an antiques dealer with a store in Randburg.

Allan was raised by Henning and her second husband, Walter Eric Monteith Fry.

The couple fostered three more children, one of whom sexually abused Allan.

The family lived in Randburg before moving to Bryanston in Sandton.

Allan attended Franklin D. Roosevelt Primary School in Roosevelt Park, Johannesburg, as well as Blairgowrie Primary School in Randburg, where one of her contemporaries was the writer Rian Malan.

Allan later attended Roedean School and graduated from Greenside High School.

She was a trained classical pianist, recorded a televised piano concerto as a child, and made her debut with Johannesburg symphony orchestra at the age of 10.

She earned a BA Honours degree in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand where she also obtained a H.E.D. Post-grad Teaching Diploma.

British newscaster Michael de Morgan opened the exhibition that was attended by art critic and watercolour artist Richard Cheales.

Prior to becoming a journalist, Allan worked as a photographic model and an English and Art teacher at Wynberg Boys' High School, Bryanston High School, and Sevenoaks Finishing School.

After an extended break she returned to the South African media frame in 2013.

In 2014, she made headlines around the world after publishing an open letter to accused murderer Oscar Pistorius.

In 2015, Marianne Thamm of the Daily Maverick described Allan as having been "the most influential writer and columnist in the country."

Allan later became the subject of press interest over the nature of her relationship with an interview subject, Eugène Terre'Blanche.

Allan strongly denied the affair allegations and took an injunction out against Terre'Blanche.

Jacana Media published Allan's memoirs, Jani Confidential, on 16 March 2015.

She continued to write on a freelance basis for South African publications such as Rapport, the Daily Maverick, Fair Lady and The Big Issue South Africa.

She also wrote occasionally for The Epoch Times and RT (formerly Russia Today), the Russian broadcaster and news agency.