Makate’s Please Call Me settlement with Vodacom was actually R1 billion, says former backer
Vodacom allegedly paid R1 billion to settle the drawn-out Please Call Me case with Nkosana Kenneth Makate in 2025.
This detail was contained in a statement issued by Makate’s former financial backer, Errol Elsdon, in which he announced that he was suing Makate for defamation.
Elsdon’s announcement that he was suing came after Makate accused his former litigation financier of fraud, launched legal action against him, and threatened to criminally prosecute him.
Makate settled his case against Vodacom in November 2025, ending 17 years of litigation over the Please Call Me service.
Neither Vodacom nor Makate revealed the settlement amount, citing non-disclosure provisions both parties agreed to during negotiations.
However, due to a quirk of Johannesburg Stock Exchange rules, Vodacom published its estimated half-yearly earnings before the settlement was announced.
It then had to publish revised numbers after the settlement was reached. By comparing its two earnings announcements, it was possible to calculate a range for the settlement amount.
Based on the earnings impact caused by the settlement, the estimate indicated that Vodacom paid Makate between R353 million and R748 million for his idea.
However, Elsdon said the amount was closer to R1 billion. That meant his company’s 40% claim against Makate is worth R400 million.
Makate won the settlement after successfully arguing before the Constitutional Court in 2016 that he had been promised and was owed compensation for an idea he had 16 years earlier.
While working as a trainee accountant at Vodacom, he pitched the idea of a method to “buzz” someone else’s phone without airtime.
Makate proposed his idea in a memo dated 21 November 2000, addressed to his former manager, Lazarus Muchenje. He called it the “buzzing option”.
According to an internal Vodacom newsletter, his idea was ultimately developed into Please Call Me, which launched on the Vodacom network in 2001, albeit almost three months after MTN.
Makate sent Vodacom a letter of demand in 2007, stating that he was owed compensation for the idea. He launched court proceedings in 2008.
Despite initially losing in the High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), Makate took the matter to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in his favour.
8 years in court, 9 years to settle
South Africa’s apex court ruled that a verbal agreement existed between Vodacom and Makate and ordered them to negotiate suitable compensation in good faith.
Foreseeing that such negotiations would end in deadlock, the court also ruled that Vodacom’s CEO should act as the deadlock breaker.
This was in honour of a commitment a Vodacom executive made to Makate, in which he promised to discuss a possible reward with then-CEO Alan Knott-Craig.
However, Makate rejected a R47 million offer from Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub and returned to court to contest the way he had calculated the compensation offer.
This time, Makate won in the High Court and the Supreme Court. However, Vodacom appealed to the Constitutional Court, which overturned the SCA’s ruling in a scathing judgment and declared a mistrial.
Days before Vodacom’s appeal was due to be reheard in the Supreme Court before a new panel of judges, it announced that it had agreed to a settlement with Makate.
Soon after, Black Rock Mining instituted a claim against Makate, arguing that it was entitled to 40% of the settlement under a 2011 litigation funding agreement.
This triggered a flurry of legal activity, including Black Rock seeking an order for 40% of Makate’s settlement to be withheld pending a determination. Black Rock also pursued arbitration.
Makate’s funds have since been released, and Black Rock has agreed to stay its arbitration application in favour of Makate launching High Court proceedings.
However, Makate also recently said he was seeking a nolle prosequi certificate from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to allow a private prosecution of Elsdon for fraud and forgery.
This triggered a response from Elsdon, who announced on Wednesday that he had instructed his attorneys to sue Makate for defamation.
When MyBroadband previously contacted Vodacom and Makate to confirm whether the settlement was indeed R1 billion, they declined to comment.
“There is nothing new we can add. The Vodacom Board approved a settlement agreement, and the parties settled the matter out of court,” a Vodacom spokesperson said.
“The settlement remains confidential. At the time, we noted that the parties were pleased that finality had been reached.”
Vodacom also took extraordinary steps to ensure the settlement remained confidential, absorbing it into its overall expenditure and barely mentioning it in its recently released annual report.
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