The central feature of South Africa's political configuration remained unchanged after citizens of all races went to polls for the first time since the African National Congress won a decisive victory in the 1994 general and provincial elections.
Though not all results were in last night, those that had been counted emphatically confirmed the ANC's status as the juggernaut of South African politics.
Having won just under 63 per cent of the vote in 1994, the ANC, with 65.9 per cent, was heading for a two-thirds majority with well over half the ballot papers counted. As important were the results in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, where the ANC was denied victory in 1994.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the ANC was in a neck-and-neck race with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). Both parties had won just over 40 per cent of the votes cast, with the IFP ahead by just a whisker.
In the Western Cape the ANC was extending the lead which it gained earlier yesterday over the New National Party, the winner of the contest in the province in 1994.
The ANC surge in both these provinces came amid computer predictions that it would easily reestablish itself as the dominant party in the legislatures of the remaining seven provinces.
The broad picture was one of an increased ANC majority at national government level and a more vocal and more assertive ANC in the two provinces which escaped its control in the 1994 election. In neither province, however, was it likely to gain an outright majority, thus opening up the prospects of coalition governments in both.
If there was any doubt about the ANC being the colossus of South Africa politics it was excised by Wednesday's election.
The dominance of the ANC was seen as a potential threat to South Africa's fledgling democracy by Mr Roelf Meyer, deputy leader of the United Party. He feared that it might led to South Africa becoming a one-party state.
But the political analyst and former politician Mr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert offered a different perspective: the ANC victory confirmed South Africa's status as a one-party-dominant democracy.
Perhaps the most profound changes occurred in the disparate opposition parties. Foremost among these was the decline of the NNP which, in its previous political life as the National Party, had governed South Africa for 46 years.
Its share of the vote was reduced from 20 per cent in 1994 to barely more than 7 per cent.
With the main outstanding results being those from the black-dominated rural areas, the probabilities were strong that the final NNP tally would be even smaller.
The major beneficiary of the NNP's decline was the Democratic Party. Having won less than 2 per cent of the vote in 1994, its share of the poll stood at just under 10 per cent as reporters scrambled to file copy.
Earlier in the day, there was talk of the DP ending as the second biggest party after the ANC. But that looked less likely last night.
Holding steady and poised to benefit as votes were counted in the deep rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal was Chief Buthelezi's IFP. Against the odds and in defiance of often scornful reports consigning it to the historical dustbin, the IFP looked set to oust the DP from its position as the second biggest party after the ANC.
But, unlike the DP, the IFP had cordial relations with the ANC and was certain to become a coalition partner in the new government assembled by the ANC president and President-designate of South Africa, Mr Thabo Mbeki.
The IFP's surprisingly good showing - the polls gave it less than 5 per cent of the vote - meant that the Chief Buthelezi's chances of ending his long political career as South Africa's Deputy President were high.
Another important change in South Africa's political configuration was the eclipse of black-dominated parties espousing black consciousness or Africanism.
Taking part in the election were two parties which traced their ideological origins to the martyred black leader, Steve Biko, Azapo and Sopa. They failed to win 1 per cent of the vote between them. The Pan Africanist Congress did not fare much better. Its president, the respected Bishop Stanley Mogoba, was last night reappraising his decision to quit the church for politics.
At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum the failure of the Afrikaner Freedom Front to garner more than 1 per cent of the vote appeared to spell the death knell for its quest to establish a separate Afrikaner state.
Mr Mbeki's election success has solidified South Africa's role as one of Washington's stalwart partners in Africa, according to analysts in Washington, and US officials have privately expressed their satisfaction.