Makate goes on legal offensive to retain his Please Call Me winnings

Please Call Me inventor Nkosana Makate has gone on the legal offensive against his former litigation funding partner Black Rock Mining and its director Errol Elsdon, who are claiming 40% of his payout from Vodacom for the Please Call Me invention.

In a case filed this week in the Pretoria High Court, Makate’s legal team is asking the court for an order declaring the Black Rock litigation funding agreement to be void on the grounds of fraud, saying he had been duped into signing it based on misrepresentations of its financial strength and litigation experience.

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Makate says material facts were hidden from him, including the fact that Black Rock was a British Virgin Islands company that had no real assets or trading history, and had been deregistered between 2014 and 2020.

It was only revived in December 2020 when news of a potential settlement with Vodacom started to surface.

The court papers also allege that Makate was kept in the dark about an amount of £150 000 (close to R3.5 million in today’s terms) raised from a company called Simba Capital, which was then diverted for the personal benefit of the Black Rock representatives, including Elsdon.

This, he says, renders the agreement void.

Elsdon at the time was acting for an entity called Sterling Rand and is claimed to have instructed Simba Capital’s attorneys to divert funds intended for Black Rock to two accounts in Cyprus.

In a second claim, Makate attacks Black Rock as Elsdon’s alter ego, claiming its incorporation and use represents an “unconscionable abuse of juristic personality” under the Companies Act.

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The Please Call Me inventor also claims the funding agreement had been cancelled in January 2015, a fact acknowledged by Black Rock’s then representative Christiaan Schoeman. The company had at that time already been deregistered.

Evolution of the agreement

The original funding agreement was signed by Makate and Schoeman in November 2011, though no specific company had been named in that agreement.

That was remedied in 2013 when Black Rock was named as the litigation funder. This triggered Black Rock’s obligations to fund Makate’s legal fees in his long-running dispute with Vodacom.

Makate says he was never given a copy of the nomination agreement despite repeated requests.

He also claims that Black Rock was fraudulently misrepresented to him as a financially sound company experienced in litigation funding when it was in fact a dormant shell company with little or no real assets.

This nomination agreement is the document that officially inserted Black Rock into the deal and is now one of the central battlegrounds in the bitter post-Vodacom settlement fight between Makate and his former backers.

The nominated company was later changed from Black Rock to Raining Men Trade, though Makate says his signature on that agreement was forged.

When the matter went to arbitration in 2020, Advocate Mandla Mabena SC ruled that the nomination of Raining Men was fraudulent and invalid.

Funder/s identity crisis

Makate says the funders repeatedly switched between Black Rock, Raining Men and even Sterling Rand to confuse the situation and keep their claim alive.

“Considering Black Rock’s deregistration, it was factually and legally incompetent to have performed its alleged obligations in terms of the impugned funding agreement, read with the impugned nomination agreement,” reads Makate’s particulars of claim before the court.

“Black Rock failed to deposit with Makate’s attorneys sufficient funds as reasonably required and requested by the attorneys from time to time to finance the litigation, within 10 days of being requested to do so.”

It also failed to indemnify him, as agreed, against four adverse cost orders awarded against him in the long-running legal dispute over the Please Call Me invention. This breach constituted a repudiation of the agreements between them.

Too late to claim now?

The leg of Makate’s case is that Black Rock’s claim for 40% of his winnings has prescribed.

His demand for fair and reasonable compensation for Please Call Me was made in January 2019, with the CEO of Vodacom offering R47 million.

On this basis, Black Rock’s claim for 40% of the winnings was extinguished through prescription by January 2022.

Makate has now asked the court for an order to this effect.

Makate is believed to have received around R750 million from Vodacom for coming up with the Please Call Me concept while employed at the company. This was after rejecting a R47 million offer from Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub.

A nearly two decade-long dispute was settled in 2025 when Vodacom agreed to an undisclosed payout.

Read:
Vodacom ordered to hand over financial records on Please call me
Vodacom’s black shareholders oppose R40bn payout in Please-Call-Me matter
Vodacom ex-employee settlement seen costing around R550m
Vodacom buries Makate settlement figure, seen as closer to R700m

That was just one – albeit important – victory on Makate’s road to financial restitution.

The next obstacle was just around the corner: Black Rock, which funded Makate’s early litigation efforts to the tune of R4.3 million, jumped into action and asked the court to put a freeze on 40% of his winnings to prevent him dissipating funds it believed it was entitled to.

The court dismissed this, so Black Rock and Elsdon took the matter to arbitration, relying on a clause in the original funding agreement that dealt with dispute resolution.

The service was launched in 2001 as a way for Vodacom customers without airtime to request a callback via SMS. It was hugely profitable for Vodacom – generating billions in revenue and building customer loyalty.

Black Rock has yet to respond to Makate’s claim. This is a developing story.