EDITORIAL | Milestone for corporate ethics

It was classic David and Goliath, and true to the biblical tale, David slayed the giant. This time around, however, it was not a single well-aimed pebble but a legal marathon that ran for about 25 years that settled the fight. This week, ahead of another bruising and expensive court battle, Nkosana “Kenneth” Makate and telecoms giant Vodacom reached an out-of-court settlement in the Please Call Me saga.

Just how much Makate will receive is unclear. Vodacom, however, told shareholders that its headline earnings per share had been adjusted by between R353m and R900m as a result of the settlement.

But it lifts a dark cloud that was hanging over the company and it will allow Makate to get on with his life, free of the stress of court hearings.

If there are lessons to be learnt, one must surely be that big companies that play fast and loose with employees will be punished. Vodacom might have thought that with the debt having prescribed that it was in the clear in the case first brought by Makate in 2012.

But four years later the Constitutional Court ruled the debt was still valid, a decision seen by many as a victory for common sense and natural justice. Vodacom had tried every dodge to deter Makate; a former CEO even claimed in a book that it was he who had developed Please Call Me. But there was no real dispute that Makate was behind it, and that he thought it up while employed as an accountant at Vodacom — so the contribution to the company was outside his normal line duties. Even a verbal promise from a Vodacom executive was not enough to secure him his due.

A later Constitutional Court judgment, ordering the two parties to reach an agreed figure, secured the breakthrough.

This was an important case of a lower-level employee forcing a corporation to stick to its undertakings and it set a precedent — it is not enough for businesses to merely comply with the law, they must also operate in a fair and ethical way.