The Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa on Tuesday, February 6, dismissed an appeal by telecommunications company Vodacom in a protracted legal battle with a man named Nkosana Makate who is the self-proclaimed inventor of the ‘Please Call Me’.
Over the years, mobile subscribers without credit on their phones have used the ‘Please Call Me’ option to send free messages to people they need to hear from.
But little is known about the origin of the concept and the brains behind the idea.
In its verdict, the South African Court upheld a ruling by a lower court affirming Nkosana Makate as the brains behind the innovations.
Consequently, Nkosana was set to finally reap big from the idea he claimed earned Vodacom billions since its invention more than 20 years ago.
News about the landmark victory traveled fast across the world with people marveling at the man’s resilience and decision to push on with the case against such a giant corporate.
Who is Nkosana Makate
Nkosana Makate is a South African finance executive known for being the brains behind the Please Call Me concept at Vodacom.
He was working at the company’s finance department, first as an accounting trainee between 1995 and 2006.
How relationship with his wife birthed Please Call Me
In an interview with the BBC, the finance expert said the idea was born out of his romantic relationship with a lady in the 2000.
At the time, he narrated, his girlfriend was in a university far from where he was working as a trainee with Vodacom.
To keep in touch, Makate and the girl had to be in frequent communication on phone which required airtime.
One day, as the finance man narrated, he discovered a gap while thinking about the possibility of communicating without necessarily having airtime on the phone.
It is at this point that the idea of ‘Please Call Me’ was hatched, making it possible to initiate a call without credit loaded on his phone.
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“It came about with my partner, my then girlfriend who is now my wife, because I did not understand why she did not call me whether it was because airtime or she just did not want to call me,” he said in a past interview.
Nkosana Makate wages court battle against his employer
Despite having proposed the concept to his employer, he did not receive any benefit from his then employer as he has affirmed in his media engagements and only received a note congratulating him for the new product.
At the time, Makate reached a verbal agreement with the company’s head of product development whom he says promised to give him a share of revenue gained from ‘Please Call Me’.
But at some point, he felt he did not get a fair share of the deal and decided to wage court battle against the telecommunication giant in 2008 and finally won the case in February 2022.
His battle in court, as would have been predicted, was not a walk in the park. At first the South African Courts dismissed his case, and it was until 2014 when he won against Vodacom.
But his victory was delayed with the High Court ruling that the manager who promised to give him a share of the revenue generated did not have the authority to do so.
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Vodacome also appealed the decision by the Court, leading the prolonged period of the case. His efforts and resilience, however, paid off on February six after the nation’s top court dismissed an appeal by Vodacom.
In the ruling delivered on Tuesday in Pretoria, the judges ordered Vodacom to pay Makate between 5% and 7.5% of the total revenue generated from the Please Call Me since 2001 when it was adopted to date.
It was not however clear the amount Nkosana Makate was entitled to, with estimates by his legal team coming to the region of R20 billion (Ksh170 billion.
