Researching Jani Allan

In 1980, Allan became a columnist for the centrist newspaper, the Sunday Times, South Africa's biggest-circulating weekly newspaper. She was the newspaper's best-read columnist over the next decade, publishing columns such as Just Jani, Jani Allan's Week and Face to Face. At the height of her fame, the newspaper commissioned a Gallup poll in 1987 to find "the most admired person in South Africa" and she came first. In 2015, Marianne Thamm of the Daily Maverick described Allan as having been "the most influential writer and columnist in the country".

She 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. 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. 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. Jacana Media published Allan's memoirs, Jani Confidential on 16 March 2015. She began writing semi-regularly for The Epoch Times from 2018. In South Africa she continues to write freelance opinion pieces, with her work mostly appearing in the Daily Maverick, Fair Lady and more recently in Rapport. In 2020 Allan began publishing opinion columns for RT (formerly Russia Today), the Russian broadcaster and news agency. Allan has lived in the United States since 2001.