Big Please Call Me lie the media repeats again and again

Nkosana Makate did not invent Please Call Me. However, this false statement has been repeated so often that most media outlets and commentators quote it as fact.

On Thursday, 31 July 2025, Vodacom won a partial court victory in a 17-year legal battle regarding compensation to Makate for his role in the Please Call Me service.

The ruling by South Africa’s Constitutional Court overturned a ruling from the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) due to procedural flaws.

The judgment was handed down by Acting Deputy Chief Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, who retires today and for whom there was a special sitting of the Constitutional Court.

Madlanga said he and his fellow judges agonised over the issues presented, considering the possibility of such total failure by a superior court was new ground within South Africa’s jurisprudence.

The Constitutional Court said it had found several fatal shortcomings in the SCA’s judgment issued last year.

It said the SCA did not thoroughly deal with why Vodacom’s compensation offer was inequitable and accepted Makate’s calculations without question.

The Constitutional Court sent the matter back to the Supreme Court of Appeal to be reheard by a different panel of judges.

The previous SCA judgement backed Makate’s claim that he is owed compensation of between R29 billion and R126 billion. Vodacom offered him R47 million.

Vodacom argued that the compensation claimed by Makate would negatively affect its network investment, coverage, and social programmes.

Vodacom, which is majority-owned by Britain’s Vodafone, said it was pleased with the constitutional court’s judgment.

Makate argued that the High Court ruling did indeed deal with Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub’s R47 million compensation offer.

He added that he was resilient and would remain that way. “We will go back to the SCA, and it must just re-examine the case and provide us with a judgment that will stand the test,” he said.

Big Please Call Me lie

What stood out about the media reports about the ruling is that most journalists called Makate the Please Call Me inventor. This is false.

The true inventor of Please Call Me is legal expert Ari Kahn, who invented and patented Please Call Me on behalf of MTN.

To understand the debacle around Please Call Me, one has to go back to 21 November 2000, when Makate shared his Buzz idea with Vodacom.

The idea was for Vodacom subscribers who have run out of airtime to Buzz another number and receive a return call.

Makate said people without airtime “should be able to at least dial, and the receiving phone should ring and register a missed call”.

“The other caller will, in turn, notice a missed call and call back the original caller who is without airtime,” his original memo stated.

Vodacom’s product development team used Makate’s idea to develop what would become known as Please Call Me.

On 19 December 2000, former Vodacom manager Lazarus Muchenje informed Makate that Vodacom would launch a product similar to his Buzzer idea.

It should be noted that Please Call Me differed significantly from Makate’s initial idea and that he was not involved in the development.

Ari Kahn, the true inventor of Please Call Me, said Makate is not the originator of the service and deserves no more than one cent.

Kahn highlighted that Makate’s Buzz idea, allowing a user without airtime to dial a phone number and give a missed call, was not technically possible.

He explained that a mobile call could only mature to a ringing state if the user had credit on their account.

Consequently, the proposal did not progress beyond an idea. Even skilled engineers at Vodacom could not reduce it to practice.

This is why there is a clear distinction between ideas and inventions. Inventions are required by law to be reduced to practice.

Ari Kahn is the true Please Call Me inventor

There is also another, even more powerful proof that Makate should not be credited as the Please Call Me inventor.

On 15 November 2000, a week before Makate proposed Buzz, Kahn conceived the Please Call Me idea.

Kahn briefed patent attorneys on 16 November to prepare a patent application for filing for the Please Call Me service.

After MTN successfully filed for IP protection on 22 January 2001, it launched its “Call Me” service on 23 January 2001.

Seven weeks later, on 15 March 2001, Vodacom launched its competing service. It was a carbon copy of the MTN service and was even identically named “Call Me”.

MTN notified Vodacom that it was infringing on their patent. Despite continuing to offer the service, Vodacom changed the name to “Please Call Me”.

The well-documented timeline, which includes IP and patent filings, established prior art as Vodacom had yet to publicly disclose and launch its service.

In 2019, Vodacom admitted that Please Call Me was invented and subsequently patented by MTN before Makate came up with the idea.

Date	MTN	Vodacom
15 November 2000	Ari Kahn conceived the ‘Call Me’ idea	–
16 November 2000	Kahn briefed MTN’s attorneys to prepare a patent application for filing.	–
20 November 2000	–	Kenneth Makate shares his ‘missed call’ Buzz idea with Vodacom.
November 2000 to January 2001	Kahn filed a patent disclosing all the steps and methods required to deliver a working solution. MTN builds the service.	Makate’s Buzz idea could not be reduced to practice. It was not technically possible since a call could only mature to a ringing state if the user had credit.
22 January 2001	MTN receives IP protection through its patent filing.	–
23 January 2001	MTN launched ‘Call Me’. It was an instant hit.	–
15 March 2001	–	Vodacom launched ‘Call Me’, a carbon copy of MTN’s service. It later changed the name to ‘Please Call Me’.