I think that a healthy way to think about languages in South Africa is
that outside of English and Afrikaans, which both have a robust
publishing market, other South African languages present excellent
opportunities for growth on the internet. Since 1994, South African
languages are being taken seriously in all kinds of media, including
publishing - and to the extent that the costs/barriers on the internet
are lower, I would be (personally) very interested in supporting any
efforts to grow what are currently fledgeling Wikipedias. To that
extent, translation is something that editors from these communities
could use - but it's up to them.
To motivate Indians to contribute to Indian language Wikipedias is also
a major opportunity here, and there's no competition - English is one of
our official languages too - and it's not an either/or situation. To the
extent that it would be wonderful to have Pedi Wikipedia move out of
incubation, it's probably wiser to think of this from the perspective
of Pedi users rather than it's peripheral benefit to, say, Afrikaans
users. Though, to the extent that that relatively under-represented
languages (in media at least) get to be big on Wikipedia, it's obvious
that there are benefits to the South African Wikipedian community as a
whole. (After all, articles in different languages from the same place,
or country, can speak to each other too: there are ways in which
different language Wikipedias can help each other for a more complete
picture).
Speaking of Pedi: Ian, in reference to your earlier post:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaza/2010-August/000055.html
- is it possible that Mohau Monaledi (are you on this list?) would be
interested in talking to Dwayne?