The results of Wednesday's by-elections showed that the Democratic Alliance was on track to win the Western Cape in next year's general election, the party's chief executive Ryan Coetzee said on Thursday.

He said the party had won nine of the 18 wards in the province previously held by the ANC.

Four of these wards had been contested by the ANC, which currently has majority in the provincial legislature.

"There's one simple message from yesterday's byelections in the
Western Cape... that the DA is on track to win this province, if not with an outright majority, then certainly on track to be the biggest party in the Western Cape by quite some distance," Coetzee said.

"The results show that the DA is increasing our support in every community in the Western Cape, across the board."

There had been a "quite spectacular" swing away from the Independent Democrats to the DA in Cape Town.

"In Mitchells Plain [a coloured area] the DA won 91.5 percent of the vote... up from 42.5 percent in 2006.

"The ID got 4.9 percent in those voting districts, down from 30.7 percent in 2006."

He said the party had also registered significant increases in support in black wards.

In a ward in Kosovo in Cape Town, the DA had increased its share of the vote from 0.3 percent, or 26 votes, in the 2006 local elections, to 25 percent, or 528 votes.

That ward was not contested by the ANC, which failed to meet candidate registration deadlines.

Though a Cope candidate won the ward with 1327 votes, the DA's total was more than the other two contestants -- the United Democratic Movement and the Pan Africanist Congress -- combined.

Coetzee said the results showed that Cope was splitting the ANC vote, and not eating into the DA's support base.

DA victories in the Cederberg and Theewaterskloof meant the party now held an absolute majority on those councils.

Cederberg was previously governed by the ANC; Theewaterskloof by a DA/ID coalition.

A DA official said the Theewaterskloof victory meant the DA and ID would take over the Overberg district council.

The official said Drakenstein (Paarl), previously governed by the ANC, would go to a DA/ID coalition.

Coetzee said the gains were not s surprise to the DA, as polls had shown that DA support had been steadily increasing.

"So I guess really what I'm trying to say today is that there is some momentum out there for the Democratic Alliance," he said.

"I think there are a variety of reasons for it.

"We are the one party in South Africa that is stable, calm and systematic in the way we are going about things right now: we don't have massive internal problems that we're dealing with.

"We also have an electorate that's frankly tired of the ANC across the board in South Africa."