Wikiproject Khoe & Saan Heritage

Welcome!

!Gâi ||tsēs! Blessed greetings to anyone who may be interested in "mother tongue" research, and in reconstructing and connecting with the original Indigenous languages.

This page is the contact point for anyone, wherever they are, interested in preserving and/or promoting the languages, cultures & histories of the Khoe and Saan peoples of Southern Africa.

Some starting points

Creation of new Wikipedias
User groups which may be language-based and/or geographically based.
Fostering greater representation of Khoe & San related content in existing Wikipedias
Increasing diversity within the Wikimedia movement

Khoe, Saan and Xam'issa Language Project

Khoe, Saan and Xam'issa Language Project is an outreach project run by Wikimedia South Africa to encourage Khoe, Saan and Kaaps language speakers to edit Wikipedia and encourage the incubation of Saan, Khoe, and Kaaps language versions of Wikipedia.

Background

A group of representatives for their communities, and as descendants of what seem to be the oldest peoples and language groups in the world, have partnered with WikimediaZA to attempt and create a user group for the Khoe, Saan and Xam'issa (Kaaps) languages. The group and volunteers from WikimediaZA had their first event which was aimed at launching the user group, as well as introducing the youth to Wikimedia Foundation as well as letting them know about the South African chapter on (30 April 2022).

Objectives

Creating a learning platform for tracing the language
Enhance social cohesion
Encourage youth development
Restore dignity to the language
Grow the Khoe, Saan and Xam'issa languages and content on Wikipedia
To help people learn how to contribute to Wikimedia projects
To establish the presence of Wikimedia in communities.

Proposed Activities

Organizing Wikipedia edit-a-thons through the user group.
Promote editing of content on Wikimedia projects that relates to the language, history, and heritage
Training the involved communities on how they can contribute to Wikimedia projects as well as their user group.
Participating in Wiki Loves activities.
Creating partners to extend the course of Wikimedia South Africa as a chapter.

The Launch

Project partner Andre Naidoo explains to the participants about Wikipedia to the first group of Khoi and San language outreach participants.

The launch held on 30 April 2022 at the Cape Town Castle went well, we were joined by 10 enthusiastic young men and women (youth), who all hail from the Phillipi community in Cape Town; they were accompanied by Andre Naidoo the founder of Care, a Non-Profit Organisation working with disadvantaged youth. Unfortunately no board members were able to attend physically. The launch was held at the Camissa Museum which tells the stories of the peopling of the Cape. It reveals the rich and complex history of Camissa Africans, those classified as ‘Coloured,’ who have been portrayed by others for centuries but never by themselves. This history and these stories, that have been buried and hidden for centuries, are now told for the first time.

On arrival, participants were registered, then taken on a tour of the museum and given a background of the museum and the history it holds. Andre sang some songs to the youth which represented the purpose of the launch and resonated a great significance to the purpose of creating the user group and trying to restore this Khoe and Saan language. Lunch was served and commenced in the training room, where we were joined virtually by User: Discott who presented on Wikimedia Foundation and WikimediaZA. The presentation ended and the second date of training was set for (21 May 2022) Pictures and videos were taken on the day which will be uploaded on Commons.

Expense report

The following expenditures were made for this project.

Project expenses
Date	Expense	Amount	Notes
30 April 2022	Catering & transport for 20 people	R5,000.00	For the event on 30 April 2022 at the Castle
21 May 2022	Catering for 22 people and transport	R1,400,00	For the event on 21 April in Retreat Cape Town, we budgeted less for this event, because we wanted to see the number of attendees and because most attendees live near the venue.

On-screen Keyboard Project

The 2024 Wiki Indaba Hackathon (physically hosted in Johannesburg but virtually active internet-wide) will set the ball rolling on the creation of an on-screen keyboard to enable the creation of content in Khoe & Saan languages. A useful starting point will be a recent West African hackathon which successfully created an on-screen [[1]].

Update: the new system for Khoe & Saan orthography on Wikimedia can be previewed in this video, starting at 44:30 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WEqya_HcAKYwAqXCwefJnV35PxOoKUhZ/view Currently it is functional both on the TranslateWiki platform, and in the Incubator. During Wiki Indaba 2024 a Khoehkoegowab speaker created the first article (using the outmoded name "Nama Wikipedia" but we had still not figured out the subtleties of the keyboard.

Article creation in the "Nama Wikipedia" in Incubator. Here, "Create Source" has been selected, but to use the click keyboard, select "Create."

Training on Wikipedia

Wikipedia Training

1st training on Wikipedia took place on (21 May 2022) at Retreat. The training had 22 attendees, this includes one of Wikimedia South Africa board members User:Michaelgraaf who gave a presentation on Wikipedia and showed attendees how they can begin to write or translate articles. The youth with a lot of enthusiasm asked questions about Wikipedia which Michael and Shupai answered. Michael and Andre exchanged books, The Lie of 1652 and First People: the Lost History of the Khoisan which will help in creating and translating articles. Pictures of the training are uploaded on Commons