Vodacom Group published its annual report on Friday – and nowhere in it, nor in the accompanying annual financial statements, is there any disclosure of what it paid to settle the “please call me” dispute, the matter that dominated the company’s legal agenda for the better part of two decades.

The integrated report is not shy about claiming the resolution as a win. “Pleasingly, we settled the ‘please call me’ matter out of court and both parties are glad that finality has been reached,” chairman Saki Macozoma wrote in his statement to shareholders.

The board lists the settlement among its key achievements for the year under the heading “Resolution of a longstanding legal matter”.

No settlement figure is disclosed. Indeed, the name Nkosana Makate – the former Vodacom trainee accountant at the centre of the saga – appears nowhere in the group’s entire annual reporting suite.

Vodacom settled with Makate out of court on 4 November 2025, days before the supreme court of appeal was due to rehear the matter. The settlement was accounted for in the group’s interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2025, but the amount was not disclosed. The figure is believed to be north of R500-million, though neither party has confirmed this.

The year-end disclosures were the last realistic opportunity for the number to surface – and it hasn’t.

No visible footprint

The settlement has left no visible footprint in the 117-page annual financial statements, where one might have expected to find it. The document makes no mention of the matter at all. The legal matters section of the contingent liabilities note, where the dispute was disclosed in previous years’ financial statements, has been reduced to a single paragraph stating that the group is “currently involved in various legal disputes across its different jurisdictions” and that “adequate provision has been made in respect of all these cases”.

Vodacom’s provisions note shows legal and regulatory provisions of R696-million at year-end, up from R610-million a year earlier, with just R86-million in new provisions created during the year – and nothing utilised. A payment of the size reportedly made to Makate does not appear to have flowed through this note at all.

Read: Voice is going the way of SMS, says Vodacom CEO

The operating profit note, which itemises charges as small as R3-million in non-audit fees paid to the group’s auditors, is similarly silent. The settlement appears to have been absorbed directly into operating expenses without separate disclosure.

The opacity is consistent with how Vodacom has handled the settlement since November. The group acknowledged in its interim results that the payment had knocked Vodacom South Africa’s financial performance, but declined to quantify it.

The settlement ended one of South Africa’s longest-running and most closely watched corporate legal battles. Makate proposed the idea for a free callback messaging service to the company’s product development team in 2000. It launched as “please call me” in 2001 and became one of the most widely used services on Vodacom’s network.

The constitutional court ruled in 2016 that Makate was entitled to reasonable compensation, leaving it to group CEO Shameel Joosub to determine the amount after negotiations between the parties deadlocked. Joosub’s determination of R47-million was rejected by Makate, sending the matter back through the courts. In February 2024, the supreme court of appeal dealt Vodacom a major blow, finding Makate was entitled to between 5% and 7.5% of the revenue generated by the service over 18 years – a formula Vodacom said would entitle him to between R29-billion and R63-billion, with “devastating consequences” for the company.

The constitutional court later set that judgment aside and ordered the matter back to a differently constituted appeal court panel. The settlement was concluded before that hearing could take place.

For Makate, the fight has not entirely ended: litigation funder Black Rock Mining is claiming 40% of his payout, a dispute now headed for arbitration after the high court in December dismissed Black Rock’s urgent bid to freeze the funds.

Whatever Vodacom paid, the company clearly determined that the number remains a secret – and its auditors at EY have evidently agreed that separate disclosure was not required. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media