Vodacom offered its former employee, Nkosana Makate, R49-million to settle the “please call me” dispute, his former “litigation funder”, Chris Schoeman, said in a radio interview on Thursday.

Speaking to Bongani Bingwa on Radio 702, Schoeman claimed that Vodacom tabled a settlement amount of R49-million, which Makate rejected. Neither Vodacom nor Makate may disclose the figure because of a confidentiality agreement.

“I think that is overly generous,” Schoeman said in the interview. “It’s very generous and, in fact, I have an interest in that award and yesterday I instructed my attorneys to write to his attorneys to say, first of all, you should accept the offer (as) you do not have legally a basis for refusing it, and in any event, some of that belongs to me. And you must accept it. It is a generous offer.”

Schoeman corroborated a claim by former MTN contractor Ari Kahn, who not only invented the “please call me” idea while working for Vodacom’s rival but actually patented it. Schoeman said it was a “lie” that Makate invented “please call me”.

“That is simply not true,” Schoeman told Bingwa. He said any suggestion that Makate is entitled to a reward running into billions of rand is “outrageous”.

Schoeman said he met Makate for the first time in 2011.

“He was totally down and out financially. He had instituted an action against Vodacom, not for the payment of any money, but an action based on his so-called idea that he brought to Vodacom. He didn’t have money to proceed with the case. My business is one of litigation funding. I fund cases all over the world and in South Africa for people that do not have the money to afford to fight…”

Missed call service

“The idea he had was not the ‘please call me’ concept. The idea he had was you’d be able to make a missed call to the phone you wanted to call and a missed call would be left on the phone and that person would then have to decide if they would call back. That’s what he presented to Vodacom, nothing more and nothing less,” Schoeman said.

“It is an idea he brought to Vodacom and he is entitled to compensation and a reasonable fee for that idea.”