CAPE TOWN — Many a political obituary has been written for South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma. Even as he began his second term last week in the Union Buildings, there were murmurs that he might not see it through, owing to the multitude of fires — many of them perilously close to home — that he’ll need to put out.

The first of these is a damning report prepared by the public protector, Thuli Madonsela, South Africa’s equivalent of an ombudsman or inspector general. The report found that Mr. Zuma had benefited unduly from a $22 million project to upgrade his private home in rural KwaZulu-Natal Province and that his administration’s profligacy and lack of oversight caused the project’s cost to quadruple. Last week, a press officer for the president announced that Mr. Zuma’s security ministers would challenge the report in court on the grounds that Ms. Madonsela had acted beyond her constitutional powers.

Mr. Zuma has been keen to quash the report because opposition parties are using it to drive a wedge between him and the rest of his party — the African National Congress. And pressure from the party’s rank and file could eventually push him out of office — as was the fate of former President Thabo Mbeki.

Next on his agenda is halting the fracturing and collapse of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Cosatu is a powerful federation of workers with about two million members. It has also historically been, along with the Communist Party, a key segment of the “tripartite alliance” that makes up the A.N.C. and has therefore toed the party line.