Voters of all races turned out in such numbers that officials were forced to keep many polling stations open long past the official 9:00 pm (1900 GMT) deadline, causing a massive security headache.

This time South Africans were voting not for freedom, won after a long struggle against apartheid, led by Mandela's ANC, but for the fruits of that hard-won freedom -- security, jobs and a better standard of living, given that millions of Blacks and mixed-race coloureds are without even the most basic facilities.

President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress took nearly 73 per cent of the votes on Robben Island, where the prison in which he spent 18 of his 27 years in jail under apartheid is located. Its returning officer became the first to declare a result.

TheANC pronounced itself ``very satisfied'' in its initial reaction to the emerging results. Essop Pahad, minister in the office of the Deputy President and ANC leader Thabo Mbeki, said the ANC had secured an ``overwhelming majority'' despite an attempt by Opposition parties to create fear by raising concerns about a possible two-thirds majority. He added that it was very pleasing that the ANC had retained the substantial support shown for it in the first all-race poll in 1994, when it had taken 62 per cent of the vote. Mbeki is likely to succeed President Nelson Mandela when Parliament meets on June 14 to elect a new president.

``The ANC has been talking about an overwhelming majority and at 61 per cent, it is already an overwhelming majority,'' Pahad told South African state radio early on Thursday, after about 45 per cent of the votes had been counted.

Asked to comment on the emergence of the Democratic Party (DP), which appeared likely to assume the mantle of the official Opposition from the New NationalParty (NNP), Pahad said the DP was ``overrated''. ``They strike a chord with those who are pretty hostile to the ANC,'' he claimed.

``It's a very exciting day,'' the 80-year-old Mandela himself said after casting the first vote at a country club in Johannesburg at 7 am. He pointed out that he was casting his ballot for only the second time, the first being in the historic post-apartheid elections in 1994.

Mbeki said he was voting for democracy when he cast his ballot in Pretoria, adding that he hoped the elections would be free and fair. ``Particularly because we haven't had a lot a violence around the country, I hope by the end of the day that it has been a free and fair election.''

Violence was kept at a minimum, in marked contrast to the threat of civil war which accompanied the 1994 campaign. However, security forces had to be rushed to several polling stations in poor black townships late on Wednesday where thousands of people queued late into the night, increasingly frustrated at the slowprogress after waiting patiently all day.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, voting in Soweto outside Johannesburg, said the election would bring economic freedom to black South Africans. ``This time we are voting for the total political and economic freedom of our people,'' Mandela's ex-wife told reporters. ``We didn't realise the extent to which we were just politically liberated in 1994,'' she added. ``Now we realise that without economic freedom of our people, we are not free.''

-- Agence France Presse