The African National Congress's (ANC's) lead was growing slowly, but steadily in the early hours of Friday morning as the counting of results slowed down.
At just after 03:00 on Friday, the ANC had 67,04% of the vote, with 8 264 909 of the 12 328 424 votes counted.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) was losing ground, from a peak of 16% on Thursday to 15,82% with 1 950 025 votes.
The Congress of the People (Cope) was sitting in third place with 7,65%, or 943 232 votes.
The rest of the parties were sitting on insignificant percentages, the highest scoring among them the United Democratic Movement, with 0,98% of the vote, or 121 384 votes.
The counting of votes slowed drastically on Friday morning with only 165 205 votes tallied between 12:55 and 03:00.
Counting had been completed in only the Eastern Cape, where the ANC won 69,50% (1 499 363) of the 2 157 366 votes.
The Independent Electoral Commission has determined that 77,31% of the 23,18-million registered voters cast their ballots in Wednesday's poll.