Mobile communications giant Vodacom has hauled “Please Call Me” inventor Nkosana Makate to court in a separate legal battle to have a 2020 court ruling, which directed the company to hand him copies of contracts, amended.
Makate and Vodacom are headed to the Supreme Court of Appeals later this month in their main legal dispute over the R47m compensation he was offered. However, they will lock horns in the Pretoria high court on Friday as the company wants a June 2020 order reworded.
Friday’s procedures relate to a ruling by the Pretoria high court in Makate’s favour on the release of records and other contracts with other service providers in income-generating initiatives with the company.
The court gave Vodacom 21 days to supply Makate with copies of other value added services contracts it had with other service providers, including those involving prepaid recharge, bulk messaging, Look4Me service, Mobile Trip Sheet, Vodacom Paypoint and the 082911 emergency service.
Constitutional Court justice Jody Kollapen, who was still in the Pretoria high court at the time, ruled that Makate should, on top of the copies of the contracts, be given parts of a KPMG report, dated November 3 2008, subject to a “confidentiality regime” which includes not passing it on to any third party.
Vodacom wants the court to reword the order it granted Makate because it was not in possession of all the contracts.
Of the 18 contracts specified, Vodacom only supplied Makate with 11. It said it could not locate the other seven.
The company said it made the court application to avoid being held in contempt of court and to “ensure that adverse inferences (and potential negative consequences) Makate seeks to rely upon, are properly adjudicated upon by this honourable court, or an appeal court”.
It seems as if Vodacom now wishes to have a further day in court with a ‘play of word’, the insertion of which, with respect, will not make an iota of difference insofar as the final adjudication of the main application is concerned.
— Nkosana Makate
Vodacom relied on Makate’s supplementary affidavit in the review application in which he said he did not “accept that the above-mentioned documents are the only documents available to Vodacom”, to push for the court order to be amended to reflect that what it gave him were all the contracts it could find.
“The prejudice that Vodacom will suffer should the application not be finally determined is manifest. All of these untested allegations made by Makate will and ought to be determined by this honourable court,” it stated in its papers.
Vodacom stated that if the court refuses to grant the variation it seeks, it is alternatively applying for leave to appeal the order in an effort to avert an order of contempt of court for non-compliance in all aspects of the order granted against the company.
In his responding papers, Makate accused Vodacom of bringing up an issue he considered irrelevant and having no bearing on the dispute in the higher court.
“It seems as if Vodacom now wishes to have a further day in court with a ‘play of word’, the insertion of which, with respect, will not make an iota of difference insofar as the final adjudication of the main application is concerned,” argued Makate.
Makate said: “No order, however worded, can compel you (Vodacom) to provide documents you don't possess.”
“It is respectfully submitted that Vodacom in these proceedings is not only frivolous and vexatious but should be frowned upon,” Makate stated.
The main legal battle between the parties is once again headed for the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.
The Pretoria high court in April granted Vodacom leave to appeal a February ruling which gave the company one month to make “a fresh determination” to pay Makate.
In August 2019, Makate said he believed Vodacom owed him in the region of R20bn, which he said reflected a 5% share of an estimated R205bn revenue generated from the Please Call Me service and interest calculated over an 18-year period.
“I would be entitled to at least R10bn before interest based on our conservative modelled calculation,” he said at the time.
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