* This article was orignially published on IOL on the 13 May, 2004
Zurich - Jack Warner, a “defector”, appears to hold South Africa's World Cup 2010 destiny in his hands.
The Trinidadian head of Concacaf (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) once said “South Africa's 2010 World Cup bid's dead without (bid chief) Danny Jordaan”.
Well, it will be, unless Jordaan - over the next 48 hours - does some of the smoothest negotiating of his life once he arrives in Zurich on Thursday to put the finishing touches to South Africa's 2010 World Cup bid.
Ironically, Warner was one of South Africa's biggest and most vociferous supporters for the 2006 bid. But that has not been the case this time around, with Warner making a point of saying he has never publicly backed South Africa's 2010 bid.
Rumours which first surfaced months ago - that Warner has been strongly linked to the Moroccans - just won't go away.
In Zurich, those rumours have been given even more credence.
Warner's defection wouldn't be such a bitter pill to stomach, but it's a well-known fact that he also controls the fate of the votes of his fellow Concacaf Fifa executive members, American Chuck Blazer and Costa Rica's Isaac Sasso-Sasso.
Blazer and Sasso-Sasso have made no bones about the fact that Warner's their “boss”, and a very senior Fifa source - in reference to the way Concacaf's trio would vote on Saturday - reiterated again on Thursday night that “they'll never split”.
So three votes, in what will by all accounts be a very close race between South Africa and Morocco, will be a potentially crippling blow to Jordaan's hopes.
Another undecided vote as late as Thursday was that of Belgian Michel D'Hooge.
South Africa appears to have garnered the majority of the eight European votes, with Swiss Fifa president Sepp Blatter, Sweden's Lennart Johannson, Scotland's David Will, Russia's Viacheslav Koloskov and Germany's Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder tipped to go with South Africa, offsetting the votes for Morocco by France's Michel Platini, Spain's Angel Maria Villa Llona and Turkey's Senes Erzik.
With five out of eight European votes secured, South Africa desperately need D'Hooge's vote to make it six.
And with the South American trio of Fifa executives - Brazil's Ricardo Teixeira, Paraguay's Nicolas Leoz and Argentina's Julio Grondona - all firmly in South Africa's corner, along with Oceania's Ahingalu Fusimalohi, Jordaan must still feel confident.
He knows, however, that he is guaranteed only two out of a possible eight Asian and African votes, which could all go Morocco's way once the likes of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are eliminated.
So, as things stand, it seems South Africa can be reasonably confident of just 10 votes. It badly needs the votes of Warner's trio of Concacaf voters and D'Hooge, otherwise it could be a very sad day indeed for 45-million South Africans on Saturday.
Jordaan and bid chairperson Irvin Khoza must have seen the Warner warning signs coming a while ago.
And that is why, when they had eight Fifa executive members in South Africa, including Blatter, for the country's 10 years of democracy celebrations a month ago, it was Warner who was selected to have a one-on-one meeting with Nelson Mandela.
And as Warner left the country, Mandela even took the drastic step of following him just hours later for a trip across the world to attend Concacaf's congress in Grenada.
Mandela will come face to face with the 24 Fifa executives at 5pm on Friday, when South Africa's 2010 bid team get the final chance to engage with the men who hold their fate in their hands.