Johannesburg – The long-running legal dispute between telecommunications giant Vodacom and “Please Call Me” inventor Nkosana Makate has finally been settled after more than two decades of court battles.
Vodacom confirmed on Wednesday that its board had approved a settlement agreement on 4 November 2025, bringing the matter to an end. The company issued a notice to shareholders through the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s SENS system, referencing earlier statements made on 31 July 2025, 7 February 2024, 28 February 2024 and 27 August 2024 about the case.
“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 parties are glad that finality has been reached in this regard,” the company stated.
The settlement amount remains confidential but has been recorded in Vodacom’s interim financial results for the six months ending 30 September 2025.
Makate, who developed the “Please Call Me” idea while working at Vodacom in 2001, has been battling the company for years over fair compensation after the service became one of Vodacom’s most successful features.
The dispute gained momentum on 8 February 2022 when the Pretoria High Court ruled that Makate was entitled to 5 percent of Vodacom’s total voice revenue generated from the Please Call Me service between March 2001 and March 2021. Judge Wendy Hughes ordered Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub to make a new determination after rejecting the company’s offer of R47 million.
Vodacom appealed the decision in the Supreme Court of Appeal, but the application was dismissed. The SCA, in a ruling delivered by Judge Ashton Schippers, set aside the company’s initial compensation decision and ordered Joosub to recalculate the amount owed to Makate. The court determined that Makate was entitled to between 5 and 7.5 percent of the total revenue earned from the service.
The matter later reached the Constitutional Court, which in August 2025 referred it back to the SCA for further handling. However, before further hearings could proceed, Vodacom withdrew its appeal and informed both the SCA and the High Court that it was abandoning the earlier judgments as part of the settlement process.
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