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Glamorous journalist and controversial columnist Jani Allan has died peacefully in a Philadelphia hospice with a good friend at her side.
Allan was once the most admired person in South Africa, one of the country’s first media personalities and a controversial Sunday Times columnist.
The friends who remained closest to her in death said she spent her last years in Philadelphia surrounded by people who were only vaguely interested in her former life and “just liked her as Juliette, their slightly eccentric friend with a strange accent”.
Allan adopted “Juliette” as her identity in the US, leaving behind the famous Jani Allan persona she was known as in South Africa. Juliette was a term of affection her mom used for her as a child, a close friend said.
Allan, 70, was adopted and grew up in Johannesburg where she started out as a school teacher at Bryanston High School. She was also a concert pianist and model before entering the world of journalism, where she became a popular personality and trendsetter and renowned columnist. In 1987 she was named the most admired person in the country.
After controversies, financial and legal battles Allan left South Africa. She eventually settled in New Jersey in the US where she worked as a waitress and became a US citizen. Later she moved to Philadelphia where she lived with her dog Breeze. The Pomeranian had health issues, and Allan ended up becoming extremely close friends with Breeze’s veterinarian, Dr Louise Morin, who treated the animal free of charge when Allan battled financially.
She was a one-of-a-kind incredible human. She was tough and she wasn't going to die on anything less than her own terms
— Yvonne Meintjes, friend of Jani Allan
In an interview with the Sunday Times only days before she passed away, Allan opened up about her difficulties accepting her cancer diagnosis and her resistance to invasive surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, describing the treatments as “medieval torture”.
She was admitted to hospice on June 24 where she received palliative care. Her friend of many decades Yvonne Meintjes flew from her home in Australia to be with Allan, and spent three weeks at her bedside.
Allan’s South African friend Albert Vorster said she was regularly visited by her closest friends, veterinarians Morin and Dr Barrie Barr, who would regularly visit her with their dogs and a mini horse to cheer her.
Vorster, a lawyer who became close friends with Allan when she came to South Africa on her book tour almost a decade ago, said he remained closely bonded with her and they would have long phone chats a few times a week until her passing.
He has been involved in cataloguing and documenting all her writings, contracts and research work which has been packed up by her friends and is being shipped back to South Africa.
Morin was with her when she drew her last breath, early on Tuesday evening in South African time.
“We are relieved this cancer journey was relatively short and the suffering brief,” Vorster said.
Meintjes agreed, saying Allan had been well cared for in the hospice where the only pain and discomfort she suffered had been from a port in her chest that drained fluid from her lungs.
Back home in Australia for the past few days, Meintjes said she had kept in contact with Allan, who was ailing fast and had been battling to speak. She said while Allan had accepted she was dying, she had been extremely tearful “because she didn’t want to go”.
“On Tuesday morning I got a call from her friend Cindy who said Jani wanted to talk to me. I immediately went onto FaceTime and there Jani was, lucid and happy, great and lovely as ever. At the end of our call I knew what was happening. She was rallying and our time was ending,” Meintjes said.
“I called a few hours later to check on her and the nurse told me she was sleeping and comfortable. I feel like she was probably dying at that moment because it was a short while after that the nurse called me back to say Jani was gone.”
Meintjes and Allan’s other friends are working together to decide when and in what form her funeral or memorial will take place in Philadelphia. They are also planning to market her autobiography Jani Confidential and pay tribute to her legacy by establishing a Jani Allan scholarship for aspiring journalists in South Africa.
“She was a one-of-a-kind incredible human. She was tough and she wasn't going to die on anything less than her own terms,” Meintjes said.
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