Please Call Me inventor Nkosana Makate cancelled an agreement with the backers who funded his legal fees in his challenge against Vodacom so that he could keep the entire payout for himself. This was claimed yesterday by one of his backers‚ Christiaan Schoeman‚ after the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) ruled that 50% of Makate’s payout be kept in a trust of his attorneys' account, says a TimesLIVE report. Schoeman and his company Raining Men filed an urgent application to interdict and restrain Makate’s lawyers from representing him in the negotiations that were ordered by the Constitutional Court in April to determine a reasonable compensation payable to him in terms of an agreement he entered into with the company’s then director of product development. Schoeman claims that he and his company Raining Men paid for Makate’s legal fees when he took the cellular phone giant to court for using his ‘Please Call Me’ idea without compensating him. Makate‚ however‚ claims that Schoeman had only paid R2.4m for his legal fees. He said he agreed to a reduced 53% cut of any settlement from Vodacom‚ but Schoeman failed to deliver on his promises. The former Vodacom employee said he cancelled their agreement in January 2015. Schoeman said: ‘Mr Makate’s legal fees were funded by myself and other funders. ‘He then cancelled the agreement so he could take (it) all for himself.' An arbitration date is yet to be set down to resolve the dispute between Schoeman and Makate.

Full TimesLIVE report