How nice to end up with an honourable winner, widely popular for really good and wholesome reasons and selected from a good group of similarly pleasant and worthy competitors!
She insisted that she found the show easy and said, "It was easy to play the game decently - I just don't think of 'scheniving'."
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She added that she played as herself and took one day at a time. She added, "So far, it's worked out well," even though, at the time of the interview, it was the day before she won the million.
Like all sensible players, she rejected the 'I'm only playing the game' excuse and said instead that too few people take responsibility since "nothing is ever their fault and they're always looking for loopholes".
Life before Survivor
She worked in the provincial offices of the police service and was desk-bound, but more recently moved to Witbank where she was more involved in active crime-prevention work - which she said she loved as it enables her to work within the community.
Did her police experience help her in the game? She said she thought it had helped being used to working with people of many different types of personality and styles of operating.
"I stayed strong until I broke down in last week's episode," she said, referring to the show with Angie's machinations. "It was sheer frustration. I normally jog for stress relief and obviously that wasn't practical on the island. There's no easy way there to relieve stress and you're actually kept very busy, not only with the challenges and tribal councils – but your meals tend to depend on the tide and as there are no lights, you just have to go to sleep as soon as it gets dark."
Looking back
She admired Hein as a 'born survivor' who was 'just unlucky' in his departure. She, like the other leaders in this game, emphasised how much depended on luck and factors out of their control.
When asked what she thought of Hein describing her as like a perfect Voortrekker vrou, she laughed and said, "He must have meant the dress, kappie and the bare feet!" But she acknowledged that this was a very big compliment, coming from Hein.
She admitted she had a good alliance and her group were lucky to be together at the right time and place to form it. She felt they shared strong moral beliefs and said, "I would take Mandla to war with me - he'd cover my back."
She felt Grant "played it like it was a chess match" and she admired his analytical skills.
Angie she was distinctly less impressed with and said, "a flip-flop like that utterly breaks one's trust. Loyalty's a two-way street."
It was a rich irony that Angie in fact ultimately provided the crucial vote that made Lorette the winner of the million. But I don't think one can make much of it in the sense of reading it as a touching gesture from Angie towards Lorette who she had so deeply upset.
Rather, it seems to have been Angie voting against Richard and that in turn related to her deep and mysterious personal grievance which nobody else understood.
A learning experience
The traditional question is hard to avoid; Did she learn anything significant from the experience?
"I knew my strengths and weaknesses already. But now I tend to appreciate more deeply what I have and the smaller things in life. I will now give prime time to playing with my children. Before Survivor, they had to finish all their homework before we could play, but now I let them have some play beforehand and if we are happy and some homework doesn't get done, then so be it."
She felt she has more patience and can work more to her natural rhythms.
As we completed our interview, before knowing the eventual result, she commented that whatever the final outcome, in a very important sense, she'd already won the big prize.
"I'm 100 percent satisfied. I entered for the experience, to test my abilities, and I found everything I'd hoped for."
Looking to the future as a millionaire
At the press conference after she won she was still obviously stunned and said, "A million always happens to someone else, not me".
Her children are six and eight, and interestingly, they didn't watch or know about Survivor. Asked whether, in view of poor police pay, she intended to quit her job , she was very definite about having no such plans.
"You don't do that sort of job for the money, it's for the love of the work," she said.
If she'd had the chance, her choice for the second spot would have been Mandla, as her first, second and third choice.
She's a nice and good person, who would be complimented to be called ordinary. Now that's a suitable winner!
(Professor M.A.Simpson, aka CyberShrink, November 2007)
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