By Mark Ogagan
South African telecommunications giants Vodacom have announced a final out of court settlement with ‘Please Call Me’ inventor, Mr. Kenneth Makate. Details of the agreement were, however, not revealed.
In a late announcement to shareholders on Wednesday (5 November), Vodacom said that its board approved the settlement agreement and that the matter will no longer continue in the courts.
The terms of the agreement were not revealed, with Vodacom saying only that it will be accounted for in the group’s interim results for the six month period ended 30 September 2025.
“The parties are glad that finality has been reached in this regard,” Vodacom said.
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.
Makate and Vodacom have been fighting over the former’s Please Call Me idea for over two decades.
Makate has been calling for fair compensation for “inventing” the Please Call Me service, which he believed should amount to almost R10 billion.
Vodacom argued against this, saying that fair compensation for his contribution to the service would be around R50 million.
Makate has maintained that he originated the idea for a free missed-call service that would allow customers to get their contacts’ attention without using airtime.
He shared the idea with his superior at Vodacom in 2001, where he said he was promised compensation.
When this did not follow through, he launched a legal battle against Vodacom in 2008, seeking payment.
The matter escalated to the Constitutional Court, where it previously ordered Vodacom to pay Makate fairly for his idea.
Following the ruling, Vodacom increased its initial offer of compensation from R10 million to R47 million, which Makate rejected, returning to court.
In the second round of legal battles, the High Court ruled in Makate’s favour for more compensation, which Vodacom rejected, taking Makate to the SCA.
The Supreme Court dismissed Vodacom’s appeal and then ordered the telco giant to compensate Makate between 5% and 7.5% of the revenue generated by the Please Call Me service over 18 years.
An analysis by MyBroadband revealed that this would have resulted in a payment anywhere between R29 billion and R55 billion, depending on which data was used to calculate the share.
However, Makate later claimed he only wanted R9.7 billion for the idea.
Vodacom escalated the matter again to the Constitutional Court, arguing that the SCA had erred in its findings, unquestioningly using data submitted by Makate’s team to draw its conclusions.
The Constitutional Court handed down a scathing judgement against the SCA’s ruling, saying that the SCA failed to allow for a fair trial by ignoring Vodacom’s inputs and submissions.
The ConCourt then ordered that the matter be taken back to the SCA for a rerun and for a differently constituted party of judges to hear the case.
Following the settlement agreement, this will no longer be happening.
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