There was a Cape Town Wikimedia meetup this week, and I got to meet a couple of new people. Victor, a Wikimedia storyteller from San Francisco, is in Cape Town, mainly to document the inspiring story of a school in Joe Slovo Park that have successfully lobbied FNB Connect for free access to Wikipedia pages. A few people from Wikimedia ZA will be going to the school this week to tell people more about the project, and teach people to edit.
I also finally got to meet Dumisane Ndubane, who’s the president of Wikimedia South Africa. We’ve interacted online for quite a long time, so it was great to meet in person. Dumisane lives in Jhb and is passing through Cape Town after coming back from the Chapter’s Conference in Milan.
Oarabile Mudongo was also there, one of the few active Tswana editors. He’s hoping to get a Botswana Chapter started. Here’s a great video of Oarabile speaking about the impact Wikipedia has had on his life.
The Wikimedia South Africa board seems to be doing some good work, and the Joburgpedia project, which aims to encourage heritage institutions (government and private) to contribute high-quality content sounds like it’s making good progress.