Amid Nkosana Makate’s 18-year case against Vodacom for his invention of Please Call Me, his early funders had a serious falling out. Scandalous allegations flew in court papers as each vied to be declared the rightful heir to a share of Makate’s winnings – at a time when Makate himself had yet to win anything.
Among these is the claim that, before there was a deal in 2011 to fund Makate’s case, his earliest funder, Chris Schoeman – who died of unknown causes at some stage after 2018 – and the inventor’s current lawyer, Wilma Lubbe, were in a “romantic relationship”.
In turn, Schoeman alleged a conspiracy by Black Rock Mining’s Errol Elsdon and Lubbe, arguing in court papers that they were trying to oust him from a share of the 40% that Makate’s funding team were set to get in return for financing the inventor’s case against Vodacom. (The cast of characters is listed here.)
(Makate has argued that none of the funders provided any money short of almost R8 000, while Elsdon states that he spent R4.39 million on the cases.)
These allegations flew in several court cases between 2015 and 2018, while Makate’s own fight against Vodacom was still undecided – he had just overturned a 2014 judgement knocking down his first court battle.
At the heart of these disputes is a 2011 agreement which Schoeman signed on behalf of a company he would nominate to fund Makate’s fight. Various courts have since accepted as fact that Black Rock Mining was nominated in 2013.
Lubbe confirms to ITWeb that she and Schoeman were involved. “The romantic relationship was ended even before the funding agreement was concluded, or us as a legal team was appointed. It is therefore really irrelevant,” she says.
Elsdon, who variously describes himself as a director and former director of the British Virgin Islands-registered company, is currently embroiled in a bitter fight in both the courts and the court of public opinion to get 40% of Makate’s confidential payout from Vodacom.
(According to Elsdon, Makate owes him 40% of R1 billion, while Peter Takaendesa, chief investment officer at Mergence Investment Managers, has pegged the out-of-court deal at R660 million based on Vodacom’s financials at the time.)
Freeze frame
Last December, Elsdon lost his urgent bid in the Johannesburg High Court to freeze the settlement money Makate received from Vodacom pending other legal action – not his first such attempt.
In 2015, Elsdon and early investor Röscher went to court to freeze money due to be paid to Schoeman, fearing it would be dissipated; that application was settled between the two sides, with the terms made an order of court. What didn’t go their way was a resulting costs order in Lubbe and Stemela’s favour, which survived their 2016 attempt to have it rescinded.
Elsdon and Röscher argued that the money would vanish because Schoeman “was in a dire financial situation” and that he and Lubbe “had been in a personal relationship” – the same relationship Lubbe has confirmed to ITWeb.
Three years after the romantic relationship was revealed in court papers, Schoeman was alleging a conspiracy to oust him from any winnings, trying in a 2018 Pretoria High Court ruling to set aside an ongoing arbitration over whether Black Rock or Raining Men held the rights to a percentage of Makate’s winnings against Vodacom.
(That 2020 arbitration ruling, finding the transfer to Raining Men fraudulent and leaving deregistered Black Rock as the rightful claimant, was covered in detail last week.)
By the time Schoeman instigated the 2018 action – now arguing the funding agreement was with him and Raining Men, and had never been cancelled – Makate’s case against Vodacom had reached the Constitutional Court. That apex 2016 ruling overturned Makate’s 2014 High Court defeat. (That case, the first of many, is unpacked here.)
Cancel culture
Makate later hired Hahn & Hahn as lawyers but, before he did so, Schoeman apparently cancelled the deal in a 22 December 2014 e-mail to Lubbe.
“My position is clear; at present there is no agreement between Makate and Raining Men and they [Elsdon and Röscher] are not entitled to any rights under the Funding Agreement ... I am the only person who holds those rights, until I nominate a company in my place...”
Hahn & Hahn then also cancelled the deal, with attorney Williams – whose first name is not given – sending an e-mail to the lawyers for Schoeman and Raining Men on 7 January 2015. This repeated cancellation is also part of Makate and Lubbe’s defence against Elsdon’s 40% claim.
Judge NB Tuchten, in the 2018 decision, noted: “At the time it was purportedly made, it suited Schoeman, Elsdon and Röscher for the funding agreement to be cancelled. This is because, to their knowledge, Vodacom was threatening proceedings to render them personally liable for the costs of the action and there seemed but a slender prospect that Makate would win his case.”
Makate’s Constitutional Court win sandwiched between the two purported cancellation letters and Schoeman’s filing of the urgent application led to the 2018 ruling.
“The prospect [now] existed that Makate would be paid a large sum of money by Vodacom. The interest of Schoeman and Raining Men in Makate’s litigation awoke afresh after the case was argued in the Constitutional Court,” wrote Tuchten.
Shell-shocked
Asked by the judge how he came to allege he had duly nominated Raining Men, or that the funding agreement hadn’t been validly cancelled, Schoeman – a former advocate who was disbarred in 1999 – said “that at the instigation of Lubbe, he became party to a fraudulent scheme to exclude Elsdon and Röscher from a share of any winnings under the funding deal”.
(Schoeman’s claim in the 2018 ruling that he represents Raining Men appears inconsistent with company records showing he was never one of its directors. Elsdon and Röscher became directors of the 2011-incorporated company only in 2014. Schoeman withdrew from the arbitration on 15 November 2018 and, having since died, isn’t available to explain why he claimed to represent Raining Men.)
Raining Men entered business rescue on 22 January 2019, roughly two weeks after Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub determined Makate should be paid R47 million.
Next week, ITWeb will unpack Raining Men, which makes key, yet brief, appearances in the legal wrangling, followed by the 18 years of the core Vodacom matter.
Schoeman alleges the conspiracy against him, which he says happened a few days after 20 November 2014, required that he agree to the cancellation of the funding agreement, which he said Lubbe instigated.
“In open court during argument before me, counsel for Schoeman confirmed that co-conspirators according to Schoeman included Lubbe and the new attorney, Williams,” among others, Tuchten’s order reads.
Lubbe tells ITWeb: “Schoeman was not excluded, the funders failed to provide the funding and the agreement was cancelled. He accepted the cancellation in writing. He tried to arrange new funders but was not successful.” Tuchten’s ruling also records that “the existence of the alleged conspiracy is denied by Makate and Lubbe”.
Grave doubts
This alleged conspiracy resurfaces in Elsdon’s 2025 affidavit to freeze Makate’s winnings, in which he writes of a “coordinated attempt to try and sideline me and the original funders from the litigation”.
Elsdon says Schoeman, “shortly before his death, confided in me that he was in fact the author of the letters despatched on the Hahn & Hahn letterhead, which were sent to himself”. The court papers don’t indicate when this was.
Schoeman, though, has been found an unreliable witness. Tuchten in August 2018 said: “Schoeman had firstly, and untruthfully, stated under oath that he had been removed from the roll of his own motion.” Schoeman was struck off the roll of advocates by the then Natal Provincial Division on 20 October 1999.
Arbitrator advocate Andrew Mabena reached the same conclusion in 2020: “I have observed Schoeman closely during his testimony and cross-examination. He was duplicitous in the extreme, tailored his evidence and answers to suit him.”
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