He's as charming, relaxed, controlled and confident (stopping just short of cocky) in person as he was within the show.
He's had an interesting life pattern of periodically - and impulsively - making major changes, giving up jobs and homes, selling off all possessions and moving on to another country, or occupation, or life. Or of going on a long six or 12 month holiday with his similarly adaptable wife.
Before one such move he talked of selling or giving away all his possessions, even burning a pile of his military medals, ribbons and citations.
Advertisement
He also doesn't wear a watch and described how, some 24 years ago, when his daughter was born, he was at sea and threw away his watch. "I get up with the sun and go to bed when it does," he said. We wondered if this might have reduced his ability to judge the duration of 30 seconds but he was very cagey about what happened in the challenge.
He presented himself as an earthy and natural guy, but after a while it seemed a tad contrived, and it's easy to speculate that maybe he works rather hard at being fascinating and mysterious. Someone remarked that he reminded them of Eugene Terreblanche - though with intelligence and charm.
On losing the challenge
As for how he came to lose the final challenge, he said that he was perhaps firstly tired and fell asleep, or that maybe he was just fed up of feeding everyone for weeks and wanted to see how they coped without him. He said he'd tell us which at the end - but this is his last Survivor press conference.
Meanwhile here's my take on what probably occurred, with some of the mysteries of "micro-sleeps". Before he left, he stole half the food and hid it, and took the main flint, though he couldn't find the second flint.
What he most missed from home, he said, was the smell of coffee, and he admitted he was sorry he didn't think of smuggling some in. Nico the smuggler, who attended the press conference, looked gratified a this.
Hein on his fellow contestants
Asked who he'd liked the least, he said it was Elsie - who from the very start didn't even try to work and refused to do anything except lie around. He also disliked Rijesh and Nichal for voting Nicola off, after having several times assured him that they would not do that and promising to vote against Elsie.
"Maybe I didn't play the game properly" he mused, "But I think one must show some sort of honour - what you do, even in a game, follows you afterwards."
By the time he left, however, he said he liked all of them. Despite the sarcasm, he liked Grant and said, “While I was feeding him, he was telling them how to vote - he's playing well." He seemed to resent the lack of any real gratitude for all he did to provide for the empty mouths.
The man behind the fire
Hein grew up in the bush, and was six when he first crossed the Namib with his father and has since crossed the Namib, Kalahari, and Richtersfeld, many times. He had bushman teachers and further survival technique training in the army. He hasn't yet collected on the R500 bet he won by making fire though, and said there are a couple of others to come, too.
He made occasional, intriguing Freudian slips of the tongue such as when he referred to our strong woman as "Roulette" and once talked about how it " hasn't changed my wife"- when he meant life.
Lorette kept trying to learn from him and told him that if they were the last two in the game, she'd feel honoured to lose to him. He knew that she was allied to Grant and Mandla from the start and felt he couldn't ask her to switch her support to him, lest she lose some of her respect for him.
He'd had no TV for over two years and has only been back in South Africa for about a year (having previously been in Zambia "under a fig tree, eating hippo"). He's only ever seen two episodes of Survivor (two from the last SA series) but decided to enter on reading about it in Huisgenoot, as a great opportunity to publicise his passion for survival skills.
Feeling let down
He was asked whether his aptitude for providing was in a way his downfall, as he seemed dispensable when they no longer needed him.
He said he couldn't help it, as he never had the luxury of being in the majority and had to keep showing his worth. He said that he would do nothing differently.
Asked whether his lack of a watch ever made him late for a meeting, he said, "I never go to meetings - they always come to me."
Similar to Dyke when I spoke with him Hein said that although he wanted to win the million, once he was in the game it's at the back of the mind.
Predictions on the winner
The two contestants he thought could have survived on their own, had this not been a game, were Dyke and Lorette. He said he admired Lorette as she was like an old-time Voortrekker woman - quiet, wise, someone who listens, and wants to learn. "Muscle only gets you through five days, then it's mental strength that gets you through the rest".
If he'd won, he'd have liked to buy "more toys", and "take a serious holiday". But then he added, " It's probably justified that I didn’t win - a young person could be set up for life with a million"
Looking to the future
He's been working towards a book on star-gazing for some 30 years, and working on writing it for two years now. He found the perfect star-maps in an old book by a deceased Dutch author and has permission from that family to use the maps, he has also asked them to check the text of his manuscript.
He's also planning a book on survival techniques, which could serve as a text for the courses he will soon be running at the survival school he plans to set up at the coast, and where he is building a new house. He also hinted there might eventually be a book of poems, too, which may surprise some viewers. He said he has written poetry for years, his first while in the army, and it began: "All wars are useless".
Asked, with all his experience of real survival situations, how tough the game was, he admited that even for him it was "about a five", and for the other contestants, a 10. He said he still has "an earthy lifestyle", and was looking forward to working on his survival school, which would teach ‘all those little things kids don't learn any more’.
(Professor M. A. Simpson, aka CyberShrink, October 2007)
Bookmark with:
What are social bookmarks?