Survivor South Africa: Maldives was filmed from mid October until mid November last year in the most Southern part of the Maldives on islands, close to the former military outpost Gan in the Addu Atoll. When the show starts on M-Net at the end of February, you’ll notice that the two familiar elements brought back are host Nico Panagio and a bunch of contestants promoted as real-life “celebrities”. The twist is that these people will be competing against real life “normal people” – i.e. people who have not placed fourth in the second season of Idols and so on. That’s right folks, the pickings for this season are slim and the names confirmed for me by M-Net are:

• Jacques Terre’ Blanche (Idols contestant),
• MXO (a singer/rapper),
• Bonnie Henna (actress in Invictus),
• Hykie Berg (actor in Binnelanders),
• Roxy Burger (ex KTV presenter),
• Carmel Fisher (actress in Rhythm City),
• Vanessa Haywood (actress in District 9)
• Phylicity Reeken (Radio & TV presenter)
• Tshepo Maseko (actor in Isidingo)

We couldn’t tell you who the 10 non-celebs are, but then again you probably won’t know them personally, so rather watch the show.

This brings me to an interesting observation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that only makes 19 contestants. Every single season of Survivor ever has included an even number of players. The only exception was Survivor Fiji, which also saw an odd number of contestants start the competition. The reason? Someone quit.

Speaking of quitting, we posed the following question to M-Net: “Can you confirm that at least one person quit during the game?” This was their response:

Survivor is a pre-recorded show and to ensure that the season is not spoiled for our viewers we will not confirm or deny any rumours about the outcome of the show.  All contestants and crew working on the show also sign contracts containing a non-disclosure agreement and legal action could be taken should we find out that there is a breach of contract.

We then asked M-Net if there was a link between someone quitting and MXO having an eye infection towards the end of last year. They responded with a “see previous answer.” And when we asked if Bonnie Henna quit the game, the answer remained the same. We’ll leave it at that.

Whether they did this on purpose or not, we don’t know, but M-Net sent us some pictures of the filming location. If you look very closely you will notice towards the right side of the island a blue tribe flag with something resembling a fish or whale on it. As the island looks a bit small, and the flag seems to be missing a Survivor logo, we’re assuming this will be some kind of exile island where contestants will get sent to.

And here we have the tribal council.

Despite vigorous investigation, the production crew on the show was offering scant information. One crew member did offer this though:

As a crew member who has worked on both the previous season and this season of Survivor SA: Maldives, I can tell you that Survivor is always tough. This time around contestants not only had the harsh elements of the tropics to contend with, but also each other. There were no charities to play for, so the contestants played a R1 million game that got really personal. Lots of drama, lots of action, lots of tension – the 24th of February is going to see an hour-and-a-half season premiere of Survivor South Africa, the likes of which South African viewers have not seen before.

Well, we’ll see.