ABSTRACT
This article examines citizen mobilisation and activism in relation to asbestos disease and litigation. Although the litigation of Cape (plc), a British company mining asbestos in South Africa, has been seen as a success story in which local activists worked alongside international lawyers and environmental campaigners to force Cape (plc) to pay compensation to 7,500 former employees with asbestos-related diseases, many claimants experienced this case as a bitter defeat. The article explores these divergent interpretations of the same litigation case, focusing on the experiences of two towns in the Northern Cape, South Africa, namely Prieska and Griquatown and on the claimants’ perspectives. The literature on social movements, political mobilisation, ethnic identity and millenarian movements is drawn upon in relation to the everyday economic and cultural experiences of people in these Northern Cape towns. In contrasting the relative isolation experienced by Griquatown residents with the networking and mobilisation process taking place in Prieska, the article argues that this isolation undermines citizens’ ability to frame asbestos disease litigation as an international victory and as a case of justice being done. Instead, claimants interpret their experiences in terms of local factors, including poverty, the history of asbestos payment, religious beliefs and, ultimately, in an idiom that corresponds to their ethnic identity.
