The ANC has maintained its control of most of the country's major cities but the DA will govern Cape Town for a second term and has increased its support countrywide.

By late last night, when 90% of the votes had been counted, the ANC held 62% and the DA had increased its share to about 23%, from 14% in the 2006 elections.

At the time of going to press, the ANC had won Gauteng's three metros: Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni comfortably, Tshwane by a smaller margin.

The biggest losers were smaller parties, many of which won less than 1%. Only COPE, the IFP and the newly formed National Freedom Party managed to get more than 2% of the vote each.

The ANC said last night that it was happy with the results so far but that it needed to work hard to make inroads in the DA-controlled Western Cape.

The ANC even secured Northern Cape's Thembalihle municipality, which includes the Afrikaner enclave of Orania.

ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said: "We promise that the ANC will deliver to all, including those in Orania."

He said that in areas in which the ruling party failed to win outright, it would consider "strategic" coalitions "case by case".

The hotly contested Nelson Mandela Bay, in Eastern Cape, was won by the ANC by a narrow margin - 51.91% to the DA's 40.24%.

By last night, the ANC had won 129 councils; the DA only 17.

A disappointed DA leader Helen Zille did not mince her words when reacting to the loss of Nelson Mandela Bay. Speaking from the IEC results centre in Pretoria, she blamed COPE for its loss.

"If COPE had [equalled its] results from the [April 2009 elections], we would have easily been able to [win] Nelson Mandela Bay. The reason we lost is because of the collapse of COPE," she said.

Coalitions between the political parties are likely to determine who takes control of many municipalities.

Zille yesterday said she was happy with the election results and that coalitions might be formed in some municipalities.

"We fared better than we thought because we are going to end up with 23% to 24% of the vote when we were targeting 20%.

"You could see coalitions coming up because our strategy is to govern where we can and to do it well.

"I am not keen to get into coalitions that seek to divide the country," Zille said.

She said the DA was attracting people across the spectrum who wanted reconciliation, redress, delivery and diversity.

"The ruling party needs to do some soul searching and decide what it is going to be - the ANC of Julius Malema and Jimmy Manyi?

"If the ANC ditches Nelson Mandela's legacy you will see the DA growing very rapidly."

A triumphant Patricia de Lille, who will be sworn in as mayor of Cape Town, said, "I feel very positive and confident. I did not go down to the gutter politics and campaigning of the ANC."

Her dejected opponent, Tony Ehrenreich, of the ANC, said he was "astounded" by the outcome of the elections in Cape Town. He ascribed his party's failure to recapture the city to "a deep unhappiness with the ANC".

Elsewhere, the DA increased its share of the black vote to at least 6% - a feat that, in some instances, involved taking wards traditionally held by the ANC, said DA strategist Ryan Coetzee

The increases were made in some unexpected areas, including Johannesburg's ward 32, which includes a sizeable section of the huge Alexandra township.

"When Julius Malema and Tokyo Sexwale came through Alexandra [two weeks ago] and made the same promises they had always been making, that did not help the ANC," said the DA's ward 32 winner, Darren Bergman.

Zanele Magwaza-Msibi's National Freedom Party dealt a savage blow to her old political home, the IFP, and is likely to go into a coalition with the ANC to unseat Mangosuthu Buthelezi's party in President Jacob Zuma's home village of Nkandla.

The IFP has run the area since 1994. The party retained Ulundi but lost the Zululand district, often described as its heartland.

COPE said it will play a decisive role in determining the course of local government. Its president, Mosiuoa Lekota, put on a brave face and maintained that his party's showing had been "impressive".

"We proved that COPE is a national party. there is no province where we don't have a presence . this is something that most opposition cannot claim," said Lekota.