After nearly two decades of legal wrangling, Vodacom has finally reached an out-of-court settlement with its former employee Nkosana Makate, the man behind the widely used “Please Call Me” service.
In a statement to shareholders on Wednesday, Vodacom announced that its board had approved the settlement agreement on November 4, 2025, bringing to an end a 17-year legal dispute that had reached South Africa’s Constitutional Court.
“Shareholders are hereby advised that on 4 November 2025, the Vodacom board approved a settlement agreement, and the matter was settled by the parties out of court,” the company said.
Vodacom did not reveal the exact settlement figure but confirmed that the amount has been accounted for in its interim financial results for the six-month period ending September 30, 2025. These results are expected to be published next week.
The settlement comes just two weeks before a scheduled court hearing on November 18, where the case was set to return to the Supreme Court of Appeal for the second time. The Constitutional Court had earlier ruled that the dispute should be heard by a new panel of judges.
Vodacom had planned to defend its Group CEO, Shameel Joosub’s 2019 determination, which valued Makate’s compensation at $2.47 million. Joosub argued that the figure was a reasonable valuation based on the available data and the contractual framework.
However, Makate’s legal team strongly disagreed, calling the amount “patently inequitable”. They argued that Joosub understated the key variables that determined the revenue generated by the “Please Call Me” service—a free text-based callback feature that became one of Vodacom’s most successful innovations.
According to Makate’s team, the service averaged 23.6 million messages daily, a scale that justified far higher compensation. They proposed that a fair settlement should be between $1.47 billion and $5.77 billion.
The “Please Call Me” saga began in the early 2000s when Makate, then a Vodacom employee, conceptualised the idea for users to send free text requests asking others to call them back—a vital communication tool during the era of costly airtime.
While Vodacom rolled out the service nationwide and benefited immensely, Makate was never compensated, prompting him to pursue legal action. The matter went through various courts, including the High Court, Supreme Court of Appeal, and Constitutional Court, each stage amplifying public interest and debate about corporate ethics and intellectual property rights.
The Constitutional Court’s landmark ruling in 2016 recognised Makate’s right to be paid, directing Vodacom to negotiate “reasonable compensation”. However, disagreements over the amount stalled the process for years, leading to further litigation.
The settlement marks the end of one of the longest and most contentious corporate legal disputes in South Africa’s telecommunications history. It also highlights broader questions around employee innovation rights and corporate accountability in the digital economy.
