Writing and passing laws is relatively easy; parliamentary oversight is politically much harder.

For the first years of the democratic parliament, the most vigorous oversight took place in the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), but Scopa is in disarray after trying to oversee the arms deal.

This week South Africa joined Zimbabwe as one of only two members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in which the parliamentary public accounts committee is not chaired by an opposition MP.

ANC MP Vincent Smith does not intend to stay for more than a few weeks, but that is long enough to leave the impression that the ANC wanted its own man while it sorted out a safe opposition MP to entrust government accounts to. Given Smith's leading role in bulldozing the previous chair, Gavin Woods, Scopa watchers are understandably suspicious.

The ANC is clearly determined not to give the post to the Democratic Alliance. Three years ago it thought Inkatha's Woods would be acquiescent. Now it seems to be debating whether the safest party might not be its new best friend, the New National Party.

This week hearings also took place on the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) bill, which aims to fund "community media, as well as small commercial media, including radio, television, print and new media".

But there are already laws whose aim is to increase media for the historically disadvantaged. The Independent Broadcasting Authority Act provided for the licensing of radio and television, but some community radio applicants have waited over four years for their applications to be heard.

Clearly something is wrong.

Surely oversight hearings on why numerous radio station applicants have not been heard are the answer. And surely that should be done before we write another law to start another body that has already come under severe criticism before its inception.

The problem is often blamed on the merger of the broadcast and telecommunications regulators into a single body, in which the far larger telecommunications interests have naturally taken the highest priority.

Maybe it's the fault of the conflict between the regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), and the department of communications. Icasa has certainly felt undermined and underresourced.

I'm sure all concerned would welcome a genuine inquiry.

But the MDDA is going ahead.

Most presenters complained that the bill gave the minister in the office of the presidency too much power in a body that deals with the media, which needs to be independent.

The National Association of Broadcasters complained that the powers granted to the minister were too wide and reduced the agency's independence from the government.

"The bill empowers the minister to intervene in a decision of the MDDA in the appeal procedure and make regulations which impact on the MDDA's decision-making function."

M-Net said the proposed involvement of the minister in prescribing the criteria for selecting and financing projects undermined the agency's independence.

Rhodes University's Guy Berger points to the provision that appeals against a decision of the board will go to the minister.

"To the extent that the MDDA needs an appeal mechanism in addition [to the courts], the bill should specify that this will be an internal mechanism," he writes. "The current provision gives the minister inappropriate power and should be scrapped."

Clive Emdon, a former director of the Independent Media Diversity Trust, which had a similar mandate, writes that "the way in which the powers of the MDDA are vested in the minister does not reflect the progressive vision of an agency intended to be governed by civil society".

The minister involved, Essop Pahad, said on SAfm this week that he was to blame for the poor communication of the government's Aids policy, which has caused so much damage.

"I blame myself, as head of government communications," he said. "We use words too loosely. We need to be more careful in the way we use the English language."

If that is true, one might question why this body is being put in his hands without oversight hearings into what went wrong over communicating the Aids policy, given the damage it is doing us.

But I think Pahad is being too hard on himself. Communicating this government's Aids policy successfully would be beyond the capabilities of Winston Churchill, given the confusion and contradictions coming from ANC officials about Aids at the moment.

With acknowledgements to Business Report.