Vodacom said on Wednesday that it had reached an out-of-court settlement in a dispute with a former employee over his role in creating the company’s “please call me” callback messaging service.
The legal battle with Nkosana Makate over “please call me” has dragged on for about 17 years, reaching South Africa’s highest 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,” Vodacom said in a statement to shareholders.
Vodacom did not disclose the settlement amount but said it is being accounted for in the group’s interim results for the six-month period ended 30 September 2025. Those results are being published next week.
The agreement between the parties comes just days before the supreme court of appeal was due to hear the case — for a second time — after the constitutional court ruled that the matter had to be heard by a new panel of judges.
Now, just two weeks before the scheduled court showdown of 18 November, the parties have suddenly settled.
Vodacom had been expected to argue that its group CEO Shameel Joosub’s prior determination of how much Makate should be compensated for his idea was reasonable. Joosub in 2019 applied his mind and determined that Makate should be awarded R47-million for the invention.
High court
Makate’s legal team disputed this assertion, arguing that Joosub “grossly understated” figures used as inputs in his determination, leading to a “patently inequitable result”. Some of the factors cited as leading to a much higher determination is the time in which Vodacom failed to “honour its contract” with Makate. Also contributing to a greater scale, according to Makate’s representatives, is the number of “please call me” messages sent out on a daily basis: an average of 23.6 million.
Read: Ari Kahn speaks out on the ‘please call me’ saga
Makate’s team wanted Joosub’s determination overturned and replaced by one made by the high court, which put his compensation at between R28-billion and R110-billion. But Vodacom said Joosub’s R47-million determination was sound, given that he was tasked with determining a reasonable amount for compensation and with how that figure ought to be calculated. — (c) 2025 Reuters, with additional reporting (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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