In a move that closes one of the most protracted chapters in South African tech history, Vodacom Group has reached an out-of-court settlement with Nkosana Makate, the inventor of the “Please Call Me” service.
Shareholders were notified that on 4 November 2025, the Vodacom Board approved a settlement agreement, finally drawing a line under the 25-year-old dispute. The announcement signals a strategic decision to avoid further legal appeals and secure closure for both parties.
“The parties are glad that finality has been reached in this regard,” the statement read, marking a stark contrast to the years of litigation that saw the case move through multiple South African courts.
The financial details of the settlement were not publicly disclosed; however, the company confirmed that “the settlement has been accounted for in the Group’s interim results for the six month period ended 30 September 2025, subsequent to the publication of a trading statement on SENS on 31 October 2025 related to those interim results.”
To formalize the conclusion, Vodacom took immediate legal steps. “As part of the settlement process, a notice was sent to the Supreme Court of Appeal withdrawing Vodacom’s appeal. Additionally, a notice was sent to the High Court to abandon the 8 February 2022 judgment,” the company stated.
This settlement ends a saga that began in 2000 when Makate, then a Vodacom trainee, proposed the concept for the missed-call messaging service. The feature became a ubiquitous and revenue-generating product across the continent, sparking a long-running dispute over fair compensation for its inventor—a dispute that has now reached its quiet, and final, resolution.
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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.
