{"id":21265,"date":"2022-02-24T19:40:01","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T00:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=21265"},"modified":"2022-02-24T19:40:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T00:40:01","slug":"nkosana-makate-the-south-african-set-to-make-millions-from-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/02\/24\/nkosana-makate-the-south-african-set-to-make-millions-from-vodacom\/","title":{"rendered":"Nkosana Makate: The South African set to make millions from Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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South African Nkosana Makate’s 14-year court battle against a huge corporate opponent is testimony to the idea that it is sometimes worth fighting on, as he is now in line for a pay-out worth millions of dollars, writes the BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Makate chooses his words carefully as if the years of working with lawyers has rubbed off on him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But it may also be because the 45-year-old is shy and unassuming. It is not immediately obvious that this is a man who was determined to take on corporate might, and is now being hailed by some as an everyman hero.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Although his long legal struggle with mobile telecoms giant Vodacom has made him famous, it is publicity he would rather not have had.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But when he felt that he had not been properly compensated for an idea of his that made the company millions of dollars, he refused to be silent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Two decades ago, he came up with the concept that went on to become Vodacom’s Please Call Me texting service, which allows customers to send a free message to another user on the same network requesting to be called back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/span><\/div>
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Please Call Me proved a popular option for people who did not have enough phone credit (Image: AFP)<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Despite various attempts to settle the case he ploughed on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Patience, loyalty and being fair in all my dealings rank very high in my world, I live by those values,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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His casual jeans and plaid shirt belied a seriousness and business-like manner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One of his most cherished gifts is a print of If, a poem by Rudyard Kipling, given to him by his mother when he turned 21.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An ode to resilience and level-headedness, the words have been the foundation of his adult life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When the subject of family comes up a warm smile crosses his face betraying Mr Makate’s matter-of-fact manner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was, after all, his wife Rebecca, his girlfriend at the time, who was the inspiration for the Please Call Me concept.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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‘I was told I was greedy’<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Twenty-two years ago Mr Makate was working as a trainee in Vodacom’s finance department.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Rebecca was a student at Fort Hare University and we were in a long-distance relationship. There’d be times where she’d want to call me but didn’t have airtime [credit to call].<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to initiate a call even when you didn’t have airtime?’ That’s how the idea came about,” he beamed, reliving the moment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He entered into a verbal agreement with the company’s then director of product development and management, Philip Geissler, that he would get a share of the revenue generated by the product once it went to market.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the time the firm even shared an internal newsletter praising him for the concept.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But something changed at some point and it is not clear why.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Suddenly I was told that I’m being greedy for wanting a share of the profits from what I created,” said Mr Makate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead of accepting the situation and deciding it was not worth taking on Vodacom, he went to court in 2008.<\/p>\n

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His team of experts estimate that Vodacom made at least $4.7bn (\u00a33.4bn) from Please Call Me and he has not seen a cent of those profits. Mr Makate has been asking for 15% of that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At first, the company denied that their ex-employee had come up with the idea and then they said he was not due any financial benefits from it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The case has gone through a number of courts<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Eventually, in 2016, it ended up in the highest court, the Constitutional Court, which found in Mr Makate’s favour and ordered the two sides to negotiate remuneration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The company offered a settlement of $3.1m saying it was “overly generous”, but he rejected it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Spirit of Kipling<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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“For me it’s about what is right, what is fair and it’s about justice. What they are doing is wrong and I cannot allow that,” he said explaining how he turned his back on an offer that would have made him a very rich man.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“The figure they offered really makes no sense because it was nowhere near what was owed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’m happy we persisted with the court review because we have now been vindicated,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier this month, High Court judge Wendy Hughes said that Vodacom had gone against the Constitutional Court ruling and negotiated in bad faith.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Judge Hughes also said he was entitled to a much bigger share of the revenue, which could run into the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Vodacom has been ordered to come back with a new figure. It has said it will appeal against the decision, adding that it had negotiated in good faith.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But for Mr Makate this is just another stage in a drawn-out legal battle that, he believes, has been designed to “outlast him” and force him to give up his claim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“That is not going to happen. I will not give up,” he said, channelling the spirit of Kipling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But there is something else, something more dear to him that is pushing him on. He wants to make his children proud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I hope they know that daddy fought a clean good fight and that they learn to stand for something in life. I also hope they learn that nothing worthy comes easy.”<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African Nkosana Makate’s 14-year court battle against a huge corporate opponent is testimony to the idea that it is sometimes worth fighting on, as he is now in line for a pay-out worth millions […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,6],"tags":[6921,977,8316],"class_list":{"0":"post-21265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-world","10":"tag-johannesburg","11":"tag-south-africa","12":"tag-vodacom","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21265"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21268,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21265\/revisions\/21268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}