Please Call Me lie the media keeps repeating
Nkosana Kenneth Makate did not invent Please Call Me. However, this false statement has been repeated so often that most media outlets and commentators quote it as fact.
Recent reports referring to Makate as the inventor of Please Call Me came after the Constitutional Court overturned a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling in favour of Vodacom.
The Supreme Court had heard an appeal brought by Vodacom regarding how much compensation the mobile operator should pay Makate for his idea.
This comes after the parties first appeared before the Constitutional Court in 2015 after Makate had lost in the High Court and the SCA.
Delivering its judgment in 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that Vodacom owed Makate compensation. However, the judges focused purely on whether there was a contract between the parties.
The apex court effectively disregarded the provenance of Please Call Me and ruled that a verbal contract existed, which Vodacom failed to honour.
According to the ruling, Makate had brought an idea to Vodacom’s product development team and was promised that the company would consider rewarding him if it were successful.
The Constitutional Court directed Vodacom and Makate to negotiate reasonable compensation. Foreseeing the high probability of negotiations breaking down, it designated the Vodacom CEO as the deadlock breaker.
Court papers subsequently filed during the second round through the High Court and SCA revealed that Vodacom had initially offered R10 million, while Makate wanted R20 billion.
Having reached an impasse, it fell to Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub to determine compensation. He offered R47 million in 2019. Makate rejected it, calling it “shocking” and an “insult”.
This resulted in the matter going through the High Court and SCA again, where Makate argued that Joosub’s approach was unreasonable. The courts sided with Makate, and Vodacom appealed to the Constitutional Court.
In a scathing judgment on 31 July 2025, the apex court ruled that the SCA must rehear the case with a differently constituted panel of judges because it failed in its “duty of proper consideration.”
The judgment was handed down by Acting Deputy Chief Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, who retired at the end of July and for whom a special sitting of the Constitutional Court was held.
Madlanga said he and his fellow judges agonised over the issues presented, as the possibility of such total failure by a superior court was new ground within South Africa’s jurisprudence.
In a unanimous ruling, the Constitutional Court found that the SCA had failed to consider critical evidence and had erred in accepting Makate’s calculations without question.
Vodacom, which is majority-owned by Britain’s Vodafone, said it was pleased that the apex court upheld its appeal. “Vodacom will now review the judgment in full and take appropriate next steps,” it said.
Makate has not responded to MyBroadband’s request for comment. However, he reportedly said he was disappointed that the Constitutional Court had made a costs order against him.
He added that he would remain resilient. “We will go back to the SCA, and it must just re-examine the case and provide us with a judgment that will stand the test,” he said.
Big Please Call Me lie
What stood out about the media reports of this latest ruling was that most journalists called Makate the Please Call Me inventor. This is false.
The true inventor of Please Call Me is programmer turned telecommunications engineer Ari Kahn, who invented and patented it while on contract to MTN.
To understand the debacle around Please Call Me, one has to go back to 21 November 2000, when Makate shared his “buzzing option” idea with his boss, while a trainee accountant at Vodacom.
The idea was for Vodacom subscribers who have run out of airtime to send a missed call to another number and receive a return call.
Makate said people without airtime “should be able to at least dial, and the receiving phone should ring and register a missed call”.
“The other caller will, in turn, notice a missed call and call back the original caller who is without airtime,” his original memo stated.
Vodacom’s official account is that its product development team used Makate’s idea to develop what would become known as Please Call Me.
On 19 December 2000, former Vodacom manager Lazarus Muchenje informed Makate that Vodacom would launch a product similar to his Buzzer idea.
It should be noted that Please Call Me differed significantly from Makate’s initial idea and that he was not involved in the development.
Ari Kahn, the true inventor of Please Call Me, said Makate is not the originator of the service and deserves no more than a cent — “a penny for his thoughts”.
Kahn said that Makate’s Buzz idea, allowing a user without airtime to dial a phone number and give a missed call, was not technically possible.
He explained that a mobile call could only mature to a ringing state if the user had credit on their account.
Consequently, the proposal did not progress beyond an idea. Even skilled engineers at Vodacom could not reduce it to practice.
This is why there is a clear distinction between ideas and inventions. Inventions are required by law to be reduced to practice.
Kahn eventually built a system similar to Makate’s idea, called StarZRO. However, it took almost 20 years of technological advancement and the advent of cloud computing before it could become a reality.
StarZRO won the GSMA’s 2022 Global Mobile Award for Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets in the Tech4Good category.
Ari Kahn is the true Please Call Me inventor
There is also another, even more powerful proof that Makate should not be credited as the inventor of Please Call Me.
On 15 November 2000, a week before Makate proposed his “buzzing option”, Kahn conceived the Call Me idea.
Kahn briefed patent attorneys on 16 November to prepare the paperwork to lodge an application for the MTN Call Me service.
After MTN successfully filed for IP protection on 22 January 2001, it launched “Call Me” on 23 January 2001.
Seven weeks later, on 15 March 2001, Vodacom launched its competing service. It was a carbon copy of MTN’s and was even identically named “Call Me”.
MTN notified Vodacom that it was infringing on their patent. Despite continuing to offer the service, Vodacom changed the name to “Please Call Me”.
The well-documented timeline, which includes IP and patent filings, established prior art as Vodacom had yet to publicly disclose or launch its service.
In 2019, Vodacom admitted that Please Call Me was invented and subsequently patented by MTN before Makate came up with the idea.
| Date | MTN | Vodacom |
|---|---|---|
| 15 November 2000 | Ari Kahn conceived the ‘Call Me’ idea | – |
| 16 November 2000 | Kahn briefed MTN’s attorneys to prepare a patent application for filing. | – |
| 20 November 2000 | – | Kenneth Makate shares his ‘missed call’ Buzz idea with Vodacom. |
| November 2000 to January 2001 | Kahn filed a patent disclosing all the steps and methods required to deliver a working solution. MTN builds the service. | Makate’s Buzz idea could not be reduced to practice. It was not technically possible since a call could only mature to a ringing state if the user had credit. |
| 22 January 2001 | MTN receives IP protection through its patent filing. | – |
| 23 January 2001 | MTN launched ‘Call Me’. It was an instant hit. | – |
| 15 March 2001 | – | Vodacom launched ‘Call Me’, a carbon copy of MTN’s service. It later changed the name to ‘Please Call Me’. |
A version of this article appeared on Newsday and is reproduced with permission.
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