Jani Allan

Who is Jani Allan?

Jani Allan is a South African columnist, broadcaster and animal rights advocate. She became a household name as a columnist for the centrist newspaper, the Sunday Times where she worked between 1980 and 1989 publishing columns such as Just Jani, Radio Jani, Jani Allan's Week, Face to Face and Jani at large. At the height of her fame, her newspaper commissioned a Gallup poll in 1987 to find "the most admired person in South Africa", she came first. She later became the subject of press interest over affair allegations with an interviewee, the late right-wing political leader Eugène Terre'Blanche. Allan denied the allegations and in 1989, fled to London after she was the target of an assassination attempt by a splinter cell group when they bombed her Johannesburg apartment. In 1992, she filed an unsuccessful libel suit against the broadcaster Channel 4 over her depiction in Nick Broomfield's 1991 documentary, The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife. She returned to South Africa in 1996, publishing a web column and presenting a radio show on Cape Talk.