Billion-rand ‘Please Call Me’ saga takes new turn as funder sues Makate
The man who claims to have bankrolled Nkosana Makate’s landmark “Please Call Me” litigation against Vodacom has hit back, hard, announcing defamation proceedings against Makate and vowing to expose, in open court, the full financial architecture behind one of South Africa’s most celebrated corporate battles.
Errol Elsdon, a businessman and former director of Black Rock Mining Ltd, confirmed on Wednesday that he has instructed his attorneys to institute defamation action against Makate, following statements published on June 7, 2026, in which Elsdon says he was falsely portrayed as a fraudster.
“I was willing to be called many things when I agreed to fund this case,” Elsdon said in a press statement. “A criminal was never one of them. I will not be branded a criminal for honouring a contract, and I will answer that accusation where it belongs: in court.”
The “Please Call Me” saga has long been framed as the story of a lone underdog taking on a telecoms giant, Makate, a former Vodacom employee who claims he invented the service without compensation, eventually securing a settlement reported at one billion rand. But Elsdon’s statement sharply contests that narrative.
According to Elsdon, when Makate first approached him and the late Christiaan Schoeman in 2011, the claim was unfunded, untested, and stalled. More critically, Elsdon alleges that the original legal framing of the case was fundamentally flawed, and that the cause of action was “substantially reworked” over the weeks following their first meeting before any funding was committed.
“This was never simply David against Goliath,” the statement reads. “This ‘David’ was backed, from the outset, by a team of funders through Black Rock.”
The funding, Elsdon insists, was not a solo venture. Capital was raised from a group of private backers, alongside arms-length institutional funding partners. A professional legal team was retained, partly on a contingency basis. Crucially, he says, the money was advanced entirely at risk, meaning that had the case against Vodacom failed, those who put up the capital would have recovered nothing.
“The funding was not one man’s money, and Black Rock was not one man’s pocket,” Elsdon said.
The dispute now before the High Court centres on the proceeds of the Vodacom settlement and whether Black Rock, as the nominated funding vehicle, is entitled to its contractual share.
Elsdon’s position rests on a written funding agreement concluded in 2011, under which Black Rock was designated the funding party. He says an arbitrator has since confirmed that Black Rock was the only entity validly nominated under that agreement, and that the nomination was never cancelled.
“What is in issue is not whether that agreement was made,” the statement reads, “but Makate’s attempt, years later, to escape its terms.”
Makate has reportedly characterised the enforcement of the agreement as extortion, an allegation Elsdon rejects with visible indignation.
“Extortion is a demand for something you have no right to,” Elsdon said. “A funding agreement is the opposite: a contract, freely signed, under which those who take the risk share in the result. Asking to be held to the very terms that brought a claim to court is not a threat. It is how litigation finance works the world over.”
Some scrutiny has fallen on Black Rock’s registration in the British Virgin Islands, and on a period during which the company was deregistered, reportedly over an unpaid annual fee.
Elsdon’s statement dismisses this as an administrative lapse. He notes that the company was subsequently restored, and that under BVI law, restoration is treated as though the deregistration never occurred. He adds that the original nomination of Black Rock predated the lapse in any event.
“These are technical questions, now properly before the courts,” the statement reads.
For Elsdon, the defamation claim is as much about vindicating a business model as it is about personal reputation. Litigation funding, where third parties finance legal claims in exchange for a share of any award, remains relatively uncommon in South Africa compared to jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and Australia, though its use is growing.
He argues that without such funding, meritorious claims by ordinary South Africans would never reach the courts.
“Without it, this claim, like many meritorious claims before it, would never have seen the light of day,” he said.
With the matter now set to be ventilated in a public forum, Elsdon says the full record of who did what and at whose financial risk will be laid bare for the first time.
“For years, this story has been told in a single voice,” he said. “Now the evidence and documents will speak for themselves.”
He offered a final, pointed summation of his position: “I helped a man who had nothing turn a stalled and unfunded claim into a landmark result. I ask only that Black Rock be held to the agreement that made it possible.”
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