After 29 gruelling days on the Pearl Islands off the coast of Panama, 27-year-old Vanessa Marawa became South Africa’s first Sole Survivor.
It was a ladies’ final, with Jacinda and Vanessa in the final two. In the end, the vote in the final Tribal Council revealed one last twist.
Mzi and Brigitte voted according along tribal alliance for Aguila team mate Vanessa while Gareth and Lezel voted for team mate Jacinda.
In the end, it was Zayn who broke tribal lines to cast his vote for Vanessa.
Survivor host Mark Bayly made the announcement live on air at the climax of the two hour finale, and a visibly shocked Vanessa collected that R1,000,000 cheque to become South Africa’s first Survivor-millionaire.
After hugging her friends and family in the front row, a weepy Vanessa told Mark that her triumph proves you don’t always have to be the strongest right from the beginning to win. A visibly disappointed Jacinda graciously noted that she and Vanessa had deserved it equally.
Vanessa was not an obvious winner by any means, at times in the game clearly taking strain and doubting that she would be up to the challenge.
In her final motivation to the jury at Tribal Council, she admitted that she “had hit a lot of lows in this game” but that it was all part of being human, and that she had not been afraid to reveal that side of her personality.
“It’s called Survivor for a reason,” she said, “because you learn to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and carry on.”
Valuable advice for any future potential Survivor, especially as Mark Bayly closed the special broadcast with the announcement that M-Net will definitely run another series in 2007.
He would not confirm where it will be filmed, but Head of Original Productions for M-Net, Carl Fisher, said in the news conference after the show that it would be in another remote, exotic location.
Fisher also said key aspects of the game - like casting and challenges - would definitely be "looked at" for the second season.
The two-hour Survivor finale kicked off with the final four Survivors heading back to camp at the end of the previous episode’s Tribal Council, with Zayn expressing his shock about Gareth getting the chop.
Dawn on Day 28 brought the first of the two most important challenges of the game. In the first challenge the Survivors had to stand on a platform constructed of four narrow beams, bound together by ropes. They had to endure hunger, exhaustion and unbearable heat as Mark enjoyed fresh fruit juice and fruit on the sidelines.
Every ten minutes Mark severed a rope with his panga, leaving one fewer beam – and less and less room to balance on.
The first Survivor to lose his balance and fall off would be out of the game. The next two would battle it out for a place in the Final Two, and the Survivor who managed to hang on the longest would become the first of the Final Two contestants.
As the Survivors settled into the challenge, Zayn joked around about distracting his fellow contestants. Instead he only succeeded in distracting himself, and Zayn became the 11th contestant to leave the island, leaving Mzi alone with the two ladies.
Facing Jacinda, Mzi launched one final strategic gambit as he quietly tried to talk Jacinda into a final deal.
“Vanessa wants me and you to go through to the final two,” he quietly tried to convince Jacinda, but she insisted on hearing it from Vanessa directly. As Mzi tried to turn to face Vanessa to try his strategy on her, he lost his balance and stepped off the beam.
That left the two ladies to face off and an angry and determined Vanessa made it clear that she didn’t appreciate Mzi’s last-minute machinations. All bets seemed to be off as Jacinda actively tried to bounce Vanessa off by shaking the beam.
But after three hours and 45 minutes, it was Jacinda who finally lost her balance, guaranteeing Vanessa a spot in the Final Two.
The last day arrived, and Mzi and Jacinda faced off in the final challenge for a spot in the Final Two.
The final challenge was a gruelling water obstacle course, designed to test the exhausted Survivors’ remaining reserves of physical strength and mental acuity.
Mzi and Jacinda had to race three times through and over water on narrow planks and over rope obstacles to collect three keys from a platform. Any Survivor who fell off had to start from the beginning.
After collecting the three keys, they each had to swim to a raft to two treasure chests, on which they had to unlock three locks to discover a puzzle made up of wooden balls. The first to construct a pyramid with the balls would win the challenge.
With Jacinda making good progress, Mzi announced victory, only for Mark to rule his puzzle incorrect. All the while Jacinda quietly plugged away at her pyramid, and triumphed.
Back at Burba Vanessa was delighted to welcome Jacinda as her fellow final contestant. As they watched the sun set for the last time, the girls looked back on their journey in a nostalgic ceremony, hanging photographs of all the contestants on a tree branch over the campfire.
Final Tribal Council, evening of Day 29: Vanessa and Jacinda faced the jury, made up of Brigitte, Lezel, Gareth, Zayn and Mzi. Mark announced that each member of the jury would get the opportunity to ask a question or make a comment about each finalist, to which the finalists could respond.
Brigitte went first, asking Jacinda who she would have chosen if she could have substituted any Rana team member from the final four with someone from Agila. Jacinda tried to avoid a definitive answer, but Brigitte insisted and Jacinda admitted that she would have replaced Zayn with Mzi.
Lezel then commented that she thought Vanessa had been a reluctant player. Vanessa admitted that at the beginning she played the game “as an observer’, but that since her stay on Dead Man’s Island, she had played as hard as anyone.
Gareth’s question to each contestant was straightforward: why does the other not deserve to win the million? Jacinda pointed out that Vanessa had hit a slump in the competition, and she didn’t. Vanessa admitted that there was no reason for Jacinda not to win.
Zayn wanted to know if Jacinda had always been open and honest with him. “I played this game wanting to wake up the next morning on the island every day,” she said.
Zayn commented to Vanessa that detractors might say she played the game on other people’s coattails, to which her response was that Survivor is not just a game of brute force, and that she got to play to her strengths in the end.
Mzi wanted to know what each contestant would do with the million and Jacinda said that she would want to help her mom by setting her up in business.
Then it was time for the ladies to make their final motivation to the jury. Jacinda apologised to all on whose toes she might have stepped, while Vanessa admitted how much she learned about her own strengths and weaknesses in the game.
After the final vote on the island, Mark took the urn with the votes and left the island, saying to the contestants that he would see them back in South Africa…
… and then the action moved live to M-Net’s Magic Center in Randburg, with Mark making a dramatic arrival by helicopter. As he led the studio audience and the viewers in an overview of the series, the contestants – looking fit and healthy after four months back in South Africa – joined him in the studio one-by-one, in the order that they were voted off.
The show started to get emotional when Bayly handed the keys to his new car over to Zayn. A clearly emotional Zayn told the audience that he won the car for his parents, and handed them the keys.
Mzi entered to a standing ovation from the studio audience, and Bayly confirmed what everyone suspected – that the public had voted Mzi the most popular Survivor in the competition. As a reward, he won a getaway to the Sabi-Sabi game reserve.
And then the moment finally arrived: Mark opened the sealed box containing the urn with the final votes, as they were cast back on the island. Mark read out the votes one by one as Jacinda and Vanessa tried to look calm.
The first vote: Vanessa. Then one for Jacinda. Another one for Vanessa, as she started to choke up. It went down to the wire, with another vote for Jacinda. And then… the fifth vote declared Vanessa South Africa’s very first Ultimate Survivor.