Please Call Me case continues as matter sent back to the SCA

NEARLY two decades have passed in Nkosana Makate’s fight to receive compensation for his Please Call Me (PCM) invention, and yet there is no end in sight in the matter.

- ZELDA VENTER

This as the Constitutional Court yesterday upheld an appeal by cellphone service provider Vodacom and ruled that the matter must be reconsidered by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

Makate said he is ready to fight on.

Acting Deputy Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga said the SCA failed to deal with all the matters that were presented before it during the appeal.

“The jurisdiction of the court is confined to constitutional issues. In this judgment, we dealt with factual issues, without deciding them, purely to demonstrate the SCA’s failure to comply with the duty of proper consideration,” Justice Madlanga said.

He added that the Constitutional Court cannot suddenly determine the factual issues.

“The matter must be remitted to the Supreme Court of Appeal for a proper determination of the appeal, and it must be heard by a differently constituted panel.”

In a unanimous judgment, which was penned by Justice Madlanga before he retired yesterday, the court found that the SCA had committed several errors in assessing Vodacom’s appeal against a previous high court decision.