1. Jani Allan was a South African journalist, columnist, writer, broadcaster, and media personality.
91 Facts About Jani Allan
1. 2.
In 1980, Allan became a columnist for a centrist newspaper, the Sunday Times, South Africa's most widely circulating weekly newspaper.
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Jani Allan published columns such as Just Jani, Jani Allan's Week, and Face to Face.
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In 1987, Jani Allan was the top choice in a newspaper commissioned Gallup poll collecting data on "The most admired person in South Africa".
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Jani Allan later became the subject of press interest over the nature of her relationship with an interview subject, Eugene Terre'Blanche.
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Jani Allan denied allegations of an affair and took an injunction out against Terre'Blanche.
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Jani Allan left South Africa when her apartment was bombed in 1989.
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Jani Allan sued and won damages from two British publications that repeated the affair allegations.
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Jani Allan filed a libel suit against Channel 4 over Nick Broomfield's documentary, The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife.
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Jani Allan lost the suit, with the judge declining to state that anyone had lied in court.
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Jani Allan returned to South Africa in 1996, publishing a sponsored web column and presenting a radio show on Cape Talk.
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In 2014, Jani Allan made headlines around the world after publishing an open letter to accused murderer Oscar Pistorius.
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Jani Allan 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.
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Jani Allan wrote occasionally for The Epoch Times and RT, the Russian broadcaster and news agency.
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Jani Allan lived in the United States from 2001 until her death from cancer in 2023.
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Jani Allan was adopted by a wealthy British-South African couple, John Murray Jani Allan and Janet Sophia Henning, at the age of one month.
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Jani Allan's mother was an antiques dealer with a store in Randburg.
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Jani Allan was raised by Henning and her second husband, Walter Eric-Monteith Fry.
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Jani Allan later attended Roedean School and graduated from Greenside High School.
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Jani Allan 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.
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Jani Allan's first published work was a series of classical music reviews for The Citizen.
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In 1980, Jani Allan was employed by editor Tertius Myburgh to write a column for the Sunday Times, then the nation's biggest-circulating weekly newspaper.
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Jani Allan had a nightly pop news spot on the David Gresham show on Springbok Radio.
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Jani Allan was voted "the most admired person in South Africa" in a Gallup poll commissioned by the Sunday Times in 1987.
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Jani Allan resumed work for the Johannesburg newspaper from their London office.
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In London, Allan launched a new column for the newspaper titled Jani at Large with the tag-line Jani Allan - Reporting from London.
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Jani Allan later worked for the SABC broadcaster and journalist Cliff Saunders's London press agency and interviewed South African and European political figures such as Jean-Marie Le Pen.
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Jani Allan was published by the London Evening Standard where she published reports on George Carman's latest case, in which Carman was defending The People against a libel case taken by Mona Bauwens.
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Jani Allan did research for and contributed to the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight.
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Jani Allan had completed Fast Cars to Ventersdorp, a satirical look at her involvement with Terre'Blanche.
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Jani Allan tackled a variety of subjects such as Affirmative action and gender issues.
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In 1998, Jani Allan appeared in the SABC documentary film, Red Jacket to discuss the South Africa-based Russian artist, Vladimir Tretchikoff known for painting the Chinese Girl.
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Allan's radio show, Jani's World, became one of the station's most popular, but attracted controversy in September 1999 when Allan interviewed American right-winger Keith Johnson of the Militia of Montana.
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Jani Allan distanced herself from Johnson's views and apologised for the offense caused to Jewish listeners.
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Between 2004 and 2005, Jani Allan wrote on a freelance basis for titles such as WorldNetDaily.
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Jani Allan regularly wrote satirical pieces about her experiences in the restaurant where she once worked.
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Jani Allan announced to the newspaper a new media project, an interactive biography project about her life and South Africa.
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Jani Allan's column was part of the magazine's 1980s edition and is a letter from Jani Allan to her younger self.
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In October 2014, the Daily Maverick published Jani Allan's column titled "I refuse to be the poster child of slut-shaming" in which Jani Allan takes issue with comments made by City Press editor Ferial Haffajee.
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In June 2015, the Daily Maverick published Jani Allan's op-ed piece on forgiveness.
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In July 2015, Jani Allan became a regular columnist at BizNews.
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In November 2015, the Daily Maverick published Jani Allan's op-ed piece on feminism in popular culture.
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That same month, the Daily Maverick published Jani Allan's widely circulated open letter column to her former editor, Tertius Myburgh.
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Jani Allan wrote the column following the revelation of several spy allegations against Myburgh.
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An interview with Allan and an extract from her memoirs, Jani Confidential was published in the February 2015 edition of Fair Lady.
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Jani Allan's memoirs were positively reviewed by Marika Sboros, an ex-Rand Daily Mail reporter now writing for BizNews.
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Jani Allan's memoir has been well received in the Afrikaans press.
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Lategan wrote that Jani Allan had been betrayed by "Judas friends" over jealousy and that she had been unfairly treated by a "patriarchal and chauvinistic media".
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Jani Allan argues that Allan gave the conservative community ammunition as she was a target as an "outspoken" female figure in the public arena.
50.
On 14 April 2014, Jani Allan published an open letter to Oscar Pistorius.
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Jani Allan described the sports star as a "faux hero" and suggested that he had taken acting lessons in preparation for his court appearance.
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Jani Allan's column went viral and was republished by the Daily Maverick, The Citizen, Biz News, and other news websites.
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Jani Allan reiterated her belief that Pistorius had taken acting lessons and highlighted his alleged relationship with a 19-year-old in that year.
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Jani Allan was vocal about the photograph on social media and published an open letter to Bachman.
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Jani Allan's piece went viral, garnering over 1 million page views.
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Jani Allan has discussed the work of the Cape Horse Protection Society and invited representatives onto her show.
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Jani Allan is critical of bullfighting, recounting her experience of being invited by an ex-boyfriend to the San Fermin running of the bulls festival in Pamplona.
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Jani Allan returned to South Africa two years later at the urging of her then-partner, Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, an IFP MP and Italian expatriate.
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In July 2017, Jani Allan wrote a widely circulated column about her financial situation and ageism in the workplace.
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Jani Allan's column was republished by BizNews and widely quoted in the South African press.
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Jani Allan appeared on the front page of both the Sunday Times and Beeld newspaper.
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Jani Allan died from cancer in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on 25 July 2023, at the age of 70.
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Jani Allan discussed her life and addressed the affair allegations in an interview with Carte Blanche co-presenter, Ruda Landman.
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Jani Allan later spoke about the Paardekraal incident in an interview with the London Sunday Times, remarking that it resembled a "set-up".
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Later, relations between the pair cooled and an acrimonious battle ensued in the press with Jani Allan taking legal action against Terre'Blanche because of repeated nuisance contact.
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Ultimately Jani Allan was not required to testify, and Terre'Blanche was acquitted.
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Jani Allan's newspaper reported in a front-page spread that the attack was a culmination of a campaign of intimidation against her that had included prowlers outside her apartment and telephone death threats.
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Jani Allan said, 'We're going to blow them out of the water.
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Jani Allan fled to Britain for security reasons in the same week that the transcripts were published.
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In retrospect, in an interview published by the London Sunday Times in 1990, Jani Allan questioned whether her association with Terre'Blanche had been orchestrated by her editor, Tertius Myburgh.
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Jani Allan was represented by Peter Carter-Ruck in the case and Channel 4 was represented by George Carman.
72.
Shaw testified in court that Jani Allan had told her that she was in love with Terre'Blanche and wanted to marry him.
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Jani Allan continued to express that her field of vision through the keyhole would not be sufficient to support her claim.
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Shaw testified that four months later, in September 1988, she got drunk with Jani Allan and accompanied her to a rendezvous with Terre'Blanche at one am.
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Jani Allan alleged that she watched from a wall as the couple kissed, embraced, and fondled for half an hour in the back of Allan's car.
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Smit testified that Jani Allan had phoned her to come and remove a drunken Terre'Blanche from her flat early one morning because Jani Allan was expecting someone and was anxious to get rid of him.
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Additional testimony against Jani Allan was given by former colleague Marlene Burger, who claimed Terre'Blanche had proposed to Jani Allan in April 1989.
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The judge said that any finding that Jani Allan had lied about the extent of this relationship did not mean she had an affair with Terre'Blanche, whom she described as "a very different man".
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The diary's disappearance was investigated by the police, but it was found that the diary had been left in the home of an English couple with whom Jani Allan had resided in 1989.
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Jani Allan insisted she was neither an extreme right-winger nor anti-semitic.
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Jani Allan said that she received a death threat on a telephone call in the court ushers' offices.
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Reports later emerged that Jani Allan was considering an appeal and that Terre'Blanche was considering suing the broadcaster for libel.
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Jani Allan suggested that pro-government forces in South Africa wanted her to lose the case so that Terre'Blanche would be "irreparably damaged" in the eyes of his "God-fearing Calvinist followers".
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In March 1993, Die Burger reported that Jani Allan was negotiating an appeal that was projected to be heard at the high court later that year.
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Jani Allan was portrayed by English actress Sarah Berger in the production starring David Suchet.
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Jani Allan responded to these claims in writing an article for The Sunday Independent where she admitted she had been an "unwitting spy" in London.
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Jani Allan revealed that she believed she was working as a researcher and journalist at Newslink International, a news agency.
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Jani Allan became suspicious over the handling of money and for the concentration of her research on right wing political groups.
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Jani Allan was able to break into Saunders' computer files when he was temporarily incapacitated and had not changed the code.
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Jani Allan made copies of the files and provided them as evidence in her Sunday Independent story.
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Jani Allan was expected to cultivate a relationship with Buthelezi's chief adviser, Mario Oriani-Ambrosini.