Former Vodacom employee Nkosana Makate has won his case against Vodacom

Here’s why you should not give up on what is yours.

The Constitutional Court in South Africa has ruled in favour of Nkosana Makate, who took Vodacom to court for stealing his “Please Call Me” concept.

Makate, who was a trainee accountant at Vodacom in 2000, claimed that he’d invented the Please Call Me concept, which allows subscribers to send call-back requests to other subscribers, and that the company’s Head of Product Development, Philip Geissler, agreed to pay Makate for this.

“[Geissler] was, in my eyes, a person of very senior authority,” he says. “We were waiting for this thing to be successful so we could conclude what my percentage would be,” he said at the time.

Speaking to South Africa’s DESTINY in a previous interview, Makete said he’d been trying to negotiate with Vodacom since 2001, but that the cellphone giant had failed to meet him halfway. He made his first court bid against Vodacom in 2008.

Several legal battles ended in failure, but unwilling to give up, he took his case to the Constitutional Court.

According to reports, Vodacom has now been ordered to pay Makate. In May 2015  MoneyWeb reported that the case had the potential to cost Vodacom billions of rands as Makete was seeking R6,7 billion in remuneration.

“All I wanted was for Vodacom and I to jointly make money from this invention on a percentage-share basis like all other business deals concluded by the company on this basis… “Please Call Me” has turned out to be one of the most successful inventions that Vodacom has ever had,” Makate was quoted saying in aMoneyWeb report. He estimated that Vodacom had made about R70 billion from the concept.

After a 15 year battle in and out of court, Vodacom has been ordered to start negotiating with Makate.