National assembly speaker Frene Ginwala on Thursday defended the replacement of African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein as head of the party's component on parliament's watchdog public accounts committee by ANC deputy chief whip Geoff Doidge. 

Speaking at a briefing for diplomats and journalists at parliament, she said in reply to a question that it would be strange if Doidge - who was the second most-senior ANC official in Parliament - did not lead the ANC component. 

All parties had introduced senior MPs on to the committee. 

Ginwala said she was not aware of any member of the committee having said they were going to be partisan. 

All parties had introduced senior MPs on to the committee 

It should be remembered that last year the Democratic Party's Ken Andrew had served as committee chairman while being his party's economic affairs spokesperson at the same time. Feinstein was replaced by Doidge last month in the middle of a controversy over the committee's stance on a multi-agency probe into the government's R43-billion arms acquisition programme. 

He is now an ordinary committee member. 

Ginwala also announced that parliament would launch a "Plain Language" project next month. It would examine, among other issues, how African languages could be developed in parliament. 

It would focus especially on how these languages could be given the same status as English and Afrikaans in all parliamentary communication, and "how we can remove all policies that restrict the use of African languages". 

With acknowledgement to Sapa and Independent Online.