The Proteas broke a five-Test losing streak when they beat England by 107 runs at Centurion Park on Sunday.
Heading into the clash, South Africa last tasted success in the five-day format when they beat Pakistan by the same margin in the second week of January.
Since then, they have lost two Tests to Sri Lanka on home soil and then three in India.
With no ICC World Championship points to show for their efforts in 2019, the Proteas kicked off new coach Mark Boucher’s reign with a bang by showing England who’s boss.
New-ball pairing Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje blew away the visitors’ tail to take them from 222/4 to 268 all out in pursuit of 376 runs for the win.
HERE WE GO: New coach Mark Boucher. Picture: Christiaan Kotze/BackpagePix.
SA captain Faf Du Plessis says of the win: “We needed that.
“Obviously the last couple of months as a Test team has been tough for us.
“But we worked really hard in the week building up to the Test and I thought it was a very good Test match - two teams fighting really hard all the way.
“We want to go up to better things again, this is just a start.
“We know it’s going to be a long journey to get there. We’ll make sure we keep working hard.”
WICKET | SCJ Broad b Rabada 6 (11m 6b 0x4 0x6) SR: 100.00
— Cricket South Africa (@OfficialCSA) December 29, 2019
Rabada ➡️ Broad, ☝️
KG wraps up the 🏴 batting
🇿🇦 Triumph 🔥 pic.twitter.com/XAIC5rW4pz
The next Test is at Newlands and starts on January 2, with SA enjoying a 1-0 lead in the three-match series and moving up to seventh on the ICC table.