Rivalry reminiscent of the twilight of apartheid had flared up between the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) shortly after the polls on Wednesday.
The IFP has made claims of vote-rigging in Johannesburg's Alexandra township, where angry residents on Friday burned tyres and barricaded roads, and the army was deployed to help quell the unrest, police said.
"Since yesterday 59 people have been arrested for public violence," police spokesman Neville Malila told AFP.
"Last night there was army deployment," he said, adding that police remained in the restive former blacks-only area.
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No casualties were reported.
The military appeared to have left the township by Saturday, according to an AFP photographer, while armoured police vehicles patrolled streets littered with debris and charred remains of election posters.
ANC provincial spokesman Nkenke Kekana blamed the Inkatha Freedom Party for the protests after it lost key constituencies in Alexandra during the vote.
"For the first time since 1994 the ANC managed to win those voting districts from the IFP. That is the source of the violence," he told AFP.
"They blocked them from coming out of the offices," he said. "The IFP must just accept that people in that area chose the ANC instead of them."
"It's anarchy and it's completely unacceptable," he added, also accusing new left-leaning party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of supporting the IFP.
"There is a history of violence in that part of Alex in the past and we don't want to go back to that," said Kekana.