I think the difference is that in the U.S. there is a law that protects Pfizer from lawsuits. In South Africa they wanted assets incase such a law isn't enforced or exists?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...
> By 1999 the average claim took two years to resolve, and 42% of resolved claims were awarded compensation, as compared with 23% for medical malpractice claims through the tort system.
That doesn’t seem like “very little”. Or do you mean the amount paid out for successful claims is lower than in regular court?
If there ever was an interesting example of 'information suppression' (or avoidance), and there are many, it's the problems recently in SA. There's so little coverage of the insane violence.
It's reasonable that a company is not going to want subject themselves to that system.
The tinfoil hat in me believes that media is not really interested in foreign violent demonstrations and reports as biased as possible about domestic protests turning violent (e.g. BLM), so that the domestic population doesn't even get the idea that violent protest can actually achieve something. Just look at French labor/social protests... immensely violent, and pretty effective when compared to Germany where the social net was pretty torn up during the last decades.