• Vodacom has been named the top employer in Africa, despite a nearly three decade long legal battle against a former employee over an alleged stolen idea.
• The telecom group, one of the largest in the world, is now trying to get out of paying big bucks to Nkosana Makate, the creator of Please Call Me.
• “We are cultivating a workplace culture where people feel valued,” says Vodacom’s CEO.

Vodacom Group has been named Africa’s number one employer for the second year in a row, ironically while in the middle of a high profile protracted legal battle against a former employee who alleges the telecom did not fairly compensate him after taking his billion Rand idea.

The Top Employers Institute Companies has named Vodacom the top employer on the continent for the second year running now, with the telecom group earning the spot according to “key HR domains” including “people strategy, work environment, talent acquisition, learning, and well-being.”

In past year the award has also gone to Vodacom Group’s subsidiaries, including its arms in South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Safaricom Kenya.

“We are incredibly proud to be certified as the Top Employer in Africa for the second year in a row. We believe that the well-being of our employees contributes directly to our ability to fulfil our purpose of connecting for a better future,” says Shameel Joosub, CEO of Vodacom Group, in a press statement sent to Hypertext.

Joosub adds that by enhancing the way people think about the company through “empathetic and inclusive policies and practices.”

“We are cultivating a workplace culture where people feel valued, empowered, and inspired to reach their full potential.”

Former Vodacom employee Nkosana Makate alleges that Vodacom did not only take his idea for the Please Call Me technology, of sending an SMS alerting others to call you, but it did so without properly compensating him despite making billions of Rands on the technology since Makate supposedly devised it.

Makate has been fighting for a fair compensation for the last 25 years against Vodacom in the courts, and was awarded compensation by the South African Constitutional Court in 2016.

At one point the telecom giant argued that the idea was created by a former Vodacom CEO, Alan Knott-Craig, who even took credit for the idea in his autobiography. Makate was able to prove in court that in fact it was he who first designed the idea in a memo delivered to Vodacom executives in 2000.

Vodacom then began a lengthy series of appeals in order to figure out how to pay Makate as little as possible after the defeat, claiming a minimum figure of R29 billion would “destroy” the international megacorporation valued at over R200 billion.

The latest sees the group try and devalue the figure of compensation by arguing that the launch of a similar Please Call Me product by rival MTN around the same time as its creation diluted Vodacom’s Please Call Me.

According to Tech Central, Makate’s team is arguing that Vodacom is using a type of delaying tactic in order to get Makate to settle for a smaller figure. The battle of attrition will head back to the Constitutional Court this year for yet another appeal from the telecom.