Vodacom settles Please Call Me battle out of court

Vodacom has finally laid the nearly two-decade-long Please Call Me battle to rest, settling with Kenneth Nkosana Makate out of court.

This puts an end to a dispute that has dragged on since 2008, with the matter having appeared before several South African courts. 

The dispute began when Makate, a former trainee accountant at Vodacom, proposed an idea for a prepaid mobile network service that would allow users with no airtime to request calls from users with credit to his manager at the time.

This concept Makate proposed later became Vodacom’s highly successful “Please Call Me” product.

However, a problem arose when Makate claimed that Vodacom agreed to compensate him for the idea, yet the company never followed through, while the telecommunications giant denied ever agreeing to compensation.

This conflict ignited a court battle that would drag on for years. The first significant judgment came in 2014, when the Gauteng High Court ruled that Makate had proven the existence of a contract. However, Vodacom was not bound by that contract.

Makate appealed this ruling, but the High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) turned down his application for leave to appeal.

This sent the case all the way to South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, which found in Makate’s favour in 2016.

The Constitutional Court ruled that an agreement existed and that Vodacom should negotiate reasonable compensation with Makate. If negotiations failed, Vodacom’s CEO Shameel Joosub would decide the amount.

This is exactly what happened, and when negotiations between Makate and Vodacom broke down, Joosub offered Makate R47 million. However, Makate rejected this offer, claiming his idea was worth far more.

Once again, the case returned to the appeal court, and in February 2024, the SCA ruled that Makate is entitled to 5% to 7.5% of the revenue derived from Please Call Me over an 18-year period, starting in 2001.

This would have amounted to billions in compensation, and soon after the judgment was handed down, Vodacom applied for leave to appeal, which was approved.

However, on Wednesday, 5 November, Vodacom announced that its board had approved a settlement agreement, with the matter having been settled out of court on 4 November.

The telecommunications giant did not provide any other details, merely stating that the parties are “glad that finality has been reached in this regard”. 

Vodacom noted that the settlement has been accounted for in its interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2025.

It added that, as part of the settlement process, a notice was sent to the Supreme Court of Appeal withdrawing Vodacom’s appeal. 

“Additionally, a notice was sent to the High Court to abandon the 8 February 2022 judgment,” it said.