South Africa’s Constitutional Court appears to be failing Please Call Me (PCM) inventor Kenneth Nkosana Makate to resolve his 16-year legal battle for compensation from telecom giant Vodacom.

While employed by Vodacom, Makate developed the innovative PCM service in 2001, which raked in billions of rand for the company. Despite this significant contribution, the former Vodacom employee is still engaged in a relentless legal battle for fair compensation. On February 6 2024, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed Vodacom’s appeal with costs.

The SCA further ordered Vodacom to pay Makate between 5% and 10% of the total revenue that the service generated over the past 18 years. However, Vodacom applied to the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal against the SCA judgment and subsequent settlement order. It appears that Vodacom’s move has served only to further delay the settlement of the matter.

Also read: Vodacom Criticises Makate’s “Please Call Me” Ruling As ‘Fundamentally Flawed’

It is not in dispute that Nkosana Makate is the inventor of Vodacom’s Please Call Me service. Vodacom, which benefited immensely from Makate’s invention, must pay him what is due. Continued attempts over the years to undermine this fact are possibly rooted in racism, that lingering ghost of apartheid.

Nigerian-British writer Ben Okri once said: “What is reality? Everybody’s reality is subjective; it’s conditioned by upbringing, ideas, temperament, religion, what’s happened to you.”

Okri’s words ring true when examining the attempts by some to erase Makate’s rightful place in history — efforts largely expressed by white journalists, perhaps influenced by old prejudices. They have consistently published stories attempting to discredit Makate’s claim to the Please Call Me service, despite overwhelming evidence, including a Constitutional Court ruling in 2016 that declared him the inventor.

Vodacom was ordered by the apex court to enter into good-faith negotiations to determine fair compensation for Makate’s invention. Yet, the debate was reignited when Ari Kahn, a former MTN contractor, claimed in a radio interview that Makate did not own the rights to the service and therefore was undeserving of compensation. Kahn argued that MTN had filed a similar patent before Vodacom launched the service in March 2001.

Some continue to resurrect Khan’s claims without presenting any new evidence. What’s critical, however, is that Khan’s assertions and the efforts to discredit Makate have overlooked key court rulings. The Constitutional Court had already addressed the differences between MTN and Vodacom’s versions of Please Call Me.

Makate’s service was built around a USSD messaging system that was simple, efficient, and designed specifically to benefit prepaid customers with no airtime — a market Vodacom directly targeted. In contrast, MTN’s offering was based on an interactive voice response (IVR) system, which was more complex, expensive, and lacked a clear market focus.

Makate’s idea, as the court noted, was not only innovative but patentable, and Vodacom benefited enormously from it. Moreover, the evidence of an American expert, Ivan Zatkovich, in Makate’s original trial further discredited Kahn’s claims. Zatkovich testified that the two systems were fundamentally different in their mechanics, business models and target markets.