Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a boss, an employer.

1979

A. Brink Dry White Season 85: I’m a Zulu, lanie.

2. a white person, a rich person.

1956		A. Sampson in Drum 101: As I sat down, between Bill and Can, I heard a murmur behind me of ‘Laanis,’ the tsotsi word for white men [DSAE].
1962		Paton & Shah Sponono I i: When I want my freedom, I’ll take it. I won’t go bumsucking ’round any bloody lanie.
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 127: The tsotsis have a variety of words for money [...] Their word for an old man is ‘toppie’, for a young girl ‘tjerrie’, for a European ‘lani’.
1979		A. Brink Dry White Season 98: To get enough capital I had to borrow from the lanies, the big boys in iGoli.
1980		A. Dangor ‘Waiting for Leila’ Waiting for Leila (2001) 35: Blerry gevaarlik this burg. Look the Lanies made him a af-oor.
2005		A. Lovejoy Acid Alex 160: We segregated the world into Uncle Guvvie’s and Private – where all the larneys and other pop mense lived.
2007		Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) 27 Nov. 🌐 Please, fella, give a larny a break’.
2010		Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) 19 Jan.. 🌐 Strange, if a laanie wrote this piece he would’ve been a racist.

3. an arrogant person.

1990		J. Naidoo Coolie Location 50: Yessus man, these laanies have all the luck.
1962		A. La Guma Walk in the Night (1968) 46: That smart son of a bitch down there who’s doing all the talking is trying to be a laan, a big shot.