In the end, Pietersen could not engineer enough of the strike and, facing up to the last ball of the match, an away win was out of the question.
But he still managed to heave a full toss from Andre Nel for the six he needed to take him to exactly 100 and limit South Africa's margin of victory to seven runs.
Pietersen couldn't tackle a target of 312 by himself, and he will never win a World Cup without plenty of help from his team-mates.
But if anyone was in any doubt that England's enormous gain has been South Africa's huge loss then this series has already ended the debate.
At 24, though, Pietersen is no raw youngster and the way he has taken to playing cricket for England encourages even a solid, feet-on-the-ground skipper like Vaughan to share his excitement with the rest of us.
"Kevin is a special player," Vaughan agreed. "He's very confident, he's quite cocky and I like that in him.
"He certainly can bat and when we get Freddie Flintoff in the middle order as well we are going to have a lot of hitting power."
Right now, England are missing Flintoff 's bowling more than his batting-But once the Lancashire allrounder recovers from ankle surgery they will have someone to send down 10 generally tight overs in a one-day international plus a player capable of matching Pietersen blow for blow.
It is a great pity the two of them are not playing together in this series. England can wait, though, especially if the pair manage to hit the heights at the same time during the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.
So far this series Pietersen's performances have been the stuff of dreams with eight innings yielding 442 runs at an average of 147.
He certainly never looked remotely fazed last night, even though England needed to break new ground in order to win, and almost masterminded an amazing victory.
As it is, Vaughan and Co find themselves 3-1 down, needing to triumph in Durban tomorrow and at Centurion on Sunday to share the series.
Given that Durban is where Pietersen played most of his cricket before leaving South Africa as a 19-year-old, more fireworks can be expected.
