Hein rewrites Survivor history
2007-09-06 11:10
Cape Town - Survivor South Africa's Hein Vosloo is a bright spark after all! In this week's instalment of M-Net's Survivor South Africa: Malaysia, Hein became the first Survivor contestant worldwide to make fire without using flint, matches or any sort of artificial firelighter.
This has not yet happened in any of the 14 American Survivor series, which are also screened on South African television.
The same applies to the more than 100 international versions of the show, broadcast all over the world.
After promising his tribe fire for almost a week, Hein surprised them by getting sparks flying using the time-honoured combination of rope and sticks.
Hein, who lived in the African bush for more than 20 years, previously told the castaways at camp Bajau that he knew seven different methods of making fire.
Spurred into action
Perhaps a R500 bet with Nichal or the loss of a gruelling reward challenge to rival tribe Iban, in which flint was the prize, spurred him into action.
However, he maintains he merely waited for the right time to get the fire going.
In the previous two episodes Hein's fellow contestants started to doubt his fire-making prowess.
He blamed his unsuccessful attempts on the weather, but viewers also heard how he decided to hold back on providing for the tribe when Bajau turned against him and his friends by voting Nicola off at the previous tribal council.
In the reward challenge that cost Bajau the priceless flint, Iban took the honours when Bajau was disqualified.
Members of the two tribes had to wrestle each other one-on-one to manoeuvre a coconut over a finishing line, but instead of playing the coconut, as instructed, Nichal, in the style of a reckless rugby player, went for the man.
He held on to his rival, Grant from Iban, preventing him from winning the game.
Viwe voted off
Survivor fans may question the timing and upshot of Hein's achievement. Did he aim to capitalise on the high spirits at camp after they had won the immunity challenge? Was he really capable of doing it earlier? And will this secure his position in the tribe and help him and his friend Dyke to win more people over to their side?
While Bajau was enjoying their camp fire, losing tribe Iban had to decide whose flame to extinguish at tribal council.
Even though Lazy Liza's name was mentioned at camp again, Grant swayed the members of Iban to dump candidate attorney Viwe Soga instead. Viwe became the third person to be voted off Survivor South Africa: Malaysia.
Viwe, who started fading away due to the lack of food, received five of the seven votes.
He clearly made a mistake when he decided to abandon the four-way alliance with Grant, Angie and Lisa and his poor performance at the immunity challenge sealed his fate.