Kenneth Makate, whose Please Call Me invention generated billions of rands in revenue for Vodacom over more than two decades, is now fighting a second legal war — this time against the funding firm that bankrolled his original battle.
In November 2025, after nearly two decades of legal wrangling, Vodacom agreed to pay Makate an undisclosed amount for his invention. Though the exact size of the settlement remains confidential, Vodacom’s half-year results to September 2025 point to a one-off cost of anywhere between R353 million and R748 million for the invention. According to Moneyweb, analysts at Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking estimated the settlement at around R512 million, with some reports placing it closer to R700 million.
That resolution, however, has spawned a fresh dispute. Black Rock Mining, a British Virgin Islands-based company, is seeking to recover 40% of Makate’s payout on the basis of a funding agreement signed in 2011 between Makate and the late Christiaan Schoeman. Based on the estimated settlement range, Black Rock Mining’s claim is potentially worth between R141 million and R299 million.
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In December 2025, the Johannesburg High Court dismissed Black Rock Mining’s urgent application to freeze 40% of Makate’s settlement funds, with Judge Don Mahon ruling that the matter could proceed through normal legal channels without the need for interim relief.
Makate’s legal advisors contend that the original 2011 funding agreement was induced by fraud and was cancelled in 2015, rendering it void. Black Rock Mining, represented by Errol Elsdon, disputes this, arguing that a prior arbitration in 2020 found that the agreement had never been validly cancelled — findings that Makate cannot now seek to relitigate.
At the centre of the dispute is which entity was properly nominated under the funding agreement. Another company, Raining Men Trade, had entered the picture as a competing nominee. The 2020 arbitration found that Black Rock Mining was the only validly nominated company. Makate says his signature was forged on the Raining Men Trade agreement.
Makate has also rejected Black Rock Mining’s push for the matter to go to arbitration, arguing that the claim has prescribed under South African law. Black Rock Mining’s attorney Sinen Mnguni has stated that the firm will proceed with or without Makate’s participation, noting that the defences his team raises around cancellation, waiver and prescription all presuppose the existence of the very funding agreement they seek to deny.
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The original 2011 funding agreement gave 40% of any winnings from Vodacom to a company still to be nominated, in exchange for financing the costs of litigation. Makate reportedly received approximately R4.3 million in funding over several years, some of it in cash.
The case raises wider questions about the emerging litigation-funding industry in South Africa, which played a pivotal role in enabling Makate — a former Vodacom trainee accountant — to sustain nearly two decades of complex and costly legal action against one of the country’s largest telecommunications groups. The Please Call Me service, launched in 2001, allows customers without airtime to request a callback via SMS and became a cornerstone product for Vodacom’s mass-market strategy.