Martus? What's that?

If you google for the word, you could get lost in a list of names, publications and even photography options. And, of course, there's also a human rights software tool named after the Greek word for "witness".

Martus is a new tool to battle human rights violations. It offers a global human rights reporting system, which creates, stores and retrieves abuse information. It addresses the special needs of the human rights community, especially of those working under dangerous conditions.

"It's very user-friendly. We've been using it in Kenya for a year-and-half," says Kipchumbah 'Kip' K. John, the sys-admin of The Citizens’ Coalition for Constitutional Change (4Cs Trust).

Kim Tucker (45) is a soft-spoken South African, with a long pony-tail, and extremely passionate about the potential of Free Software and free knowledge in education. He comes from the Open Source Centre at the Meraka Institute of the African Advanced Institute for Information & Communications Technology in Pretoria

"My job is that of Open Mentor. That's the job title," explains Tucker. "The big entity (where I work) is the (South African) Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research or CSIR, and within the Meraka Institute is the Open Source Centre. That centre was created to accelerate Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) adoption in South Africa, Africa and beyond."

Fahamu www.fahamu.org describes itself as a social justice organisation, interested in ways to promote social justice and human rights in Africa and throughout the world. They have developed some innovative ways using technology to do so.

"We're not interested in technology per se, but in the ways technology can empower people. To understand human rights, to empower them," says Fahamu production manager Becky Faith.

"We've got a range of CD-Rom based distance learning material called 'Learning for Change'. We originally used CD-Roms because developing distance learning material over the internet means you're excluding large populations who don't have access to the Net. CDroms which run on slow machines are a good investment," Faith says.

When you create some creative work, you store it away, make sure you squeeze out the most (earnings) out of it, and don't allow anybody to copy it. Right?

Wrong. The message of the South African Creative Commons network -- http://za.creativecommons.org -- is that you have a wide range of options to choose from, away from the 'all rights reserved' model that writers, artists, musicians and others are often psched into believing in.

Creative Commons South Africa has a real-life and web-based presence, dedicated to "showcasing the work of local creators, educators and administrators who use Creative

When you create some creative work, you store it away, make sure you squeeze out the most (earnings) out of it, and don't allow anybody to copy it. Right?

Wrong. The message of the South African Creative Commons network -- http://za.creativecommons.org -- is that you have a wide range of options to choose from, away from the 'all rights reserved' model that writers, artists, musicians and others are often psched into believing in.

Creative Commons South Africa has a real-life and web-based presence, dedicated to "showcasing the work of local creators, educators and administrators who use Creative

Arun Mehta (52) is an engineer-activist from India, and moderates various discussion groups in cyberspace. He's also the CTO (chief technical officer) of the Radiophony.com network.

One of the few alumni of India's prestigious Indian Institute of Technology who decided to stay back, and not add to the brain-drain, he has been a long-time campaigner for the apt use of technology. Recently, he also moved into teaching computing science at the JMIT, near Karnal in Haryana. He is known for his work in campaigning to open up radio broadcasting to the citizen in India, and works on ICT-for-disability issues.

Even Henshew-Plath is based in San Francisco, is a lead-engineer for his day-job and counts himself as an activist (with the independent media network Indymedia and other organisations) out of his passion.

His email address -- evan@protest.net -- says it all. It's based on a protest portal which "unites activists under one URL", as the New York Times once described it. Protest.Net calls itself "a collective of activists who are working together to create our own media" and publishing their own public record of political activities, so as to take a "stand against the established media".

Indymedia, the independent media collective, started around the WTO protest in 1999, notes Even, when people wanted to create a people's newsroom. It was intended to be a collaborative newsroom of alternative journalists. "It was fairly successful," says he.

Wire Lunghabo James talks to Frederick Noronha about organising Africa Source 2, running a GNU/Linux-based firm from the heart of Africa, and why Free Software is specially relevant to the continent. James turns 32 this year, and has one son. He studied in Uganda's Makarere University.

Q: How much of a challenge was it to organise an event like Africa Source 2?

Initially, I didn't expect it to be such a challenge. But when when the actual work began, I realised how big it was. The location (Kalangala, an island on the banks of Lake Victoria in Uganda) is so remote; you had to plan for the smallest thing. We were planning for everything, down to staples. It was a logistical nightmare. Also, coordinating the travel for delegates... from the airport to this point.

Out of college, at a time when most young people would like just to have a good time, Rudi von Staden (27) is onto something very different. He believes his tech skills can really make a difference to those working for social change in southern Africa. And his commitment shows...

At Africa Source 2, a camp held in Uganda in early 2006 aimed at sharing Free Software skills with non-profit organisations, Rudy worked late into the night and began early the next morning, setting arrangements in place. He shares his vision and mission with us:

Q: Rudy, could you begin by telling us something about your goals?

Dwayne Bailey (34) lives in Pretoria and comes from Cape Town, in South Africa. In the world of Free Software and Open Source, Dwayne is well known for preaching the localisation gospel.

Says Dwayne: "Actually localisation is everything that makes the computer work for you in your locale (country and language). Translating the computer interfaces is by far the biggest task and ongoing. But its not the complete picture. Keyboards, fonts, locales, date systems, rendering, bidi are all part of localisation."

Dwayne has been involved with a major translation project in South Africa. As he put it when we last spoke, "At Translate.org.za we're localising Free and Open Source Software into 11 South African languages. One is English, it's quite an easy one (smiles). The others are Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Venda, Tsonga, Tswana, Siswati, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Ndebele." [2]