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Rescue teams - braving sheer cliffs and a raging torrent - managed to save two survivors.
They were picked up by helicopters after clinging for 36 hours to rocks of the gorge of Storms River - a popular adventure tourist attraction.
But another six people still missing since the accident happened on Saturday are feared dead.
Another nine people pulled themselves out of the river moments after the wall of water struck.
The accident happened when a surge of water hit the group of 24 South Africans riding on rubber tubes on the river, which froms the border between Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces.
Rescue
The search for more survivors would continue at daybreak, police said.
 This kind of rafting on Storms River is known as blackwater tubing
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South African television showed pictures of survivors comforting each other as the bodies of victims were loaded into ambulances.
The group were riding down the river on individual rubber tubes - wearing wetsuits, but no life jackets - when they were hit by the surge.
More than half of them were swept down the fast-flowing river.
Narrow gorge
The accident occurred near Storms River village, west of Port Elizabeth, in an area that had experienced heavy rains for the previous four days.
Mr Vogt said guides had checked the river an hour before the trip and everything was normal.
Police believe the accident resulted from the freak flooding of a tributary that fed into the Storms River.
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