South Africa is stumbling through its most testing year since the end of white rule 14 years ago.

The after-shocks of last December’s tumultuous leadership election in the ruling African National Congress, which climaxed with the defeat of the incumbent, the national president Thabo Mbeki, by the sometime populist Jacob Zuma, have left the government gravely weakened, hampering its response to a series of political, economic and social crises that have buffeted the country in the past five months.