Elon Musk’s daddy on Elon Musk’s daddy issues
Errol Musk is the father of the richest man in the world, and he has plenty to say about his son.
On November 4, 2024, a film crew from Podcast and Chill arrived at Errol Musk’s house, at an undisclosed location in South Africa, somewhere “very far from Cape Town.”
Errol Musk is the father of Elon Musk, whose money and social media platform helped deliver victory to Donald Trump later that day. Podcast and Chill is the most popular podcast in South Africa, with more than 1.5 million followers on Youtube. The show’s host, Macgyver Mukwevho, goes by the stage name MacG. His interview style is bit like Joe Rogan’s: He doesn’t contradict his guests or push back against them; he can come off as sycophantic. The technique is particularly effective when MacG interviews egotists: They relax, and start spilling the beans.
MacG’s interview with Errol Musk was uploaded to Youtube on November 14, but I only stumbled across it in January. Listening to the podcast was uncomfortably nostalgic for me: I grew up in the neighborhoods where Elon Musk spent his childhood—the northern suburbs of Johannesburg; and Errol Musk’s accent and speech mannerisms remind me of the fathers of my school friends.
But Elon Musk’s childhood was rather different from mine. He was born into real privilege (not that I had a hard childhood, but my parents did not own a yacht and a plane). Musk’s father, who likes to call himself an engineer, made a fortune in real estate development, and then another fortune in legally-dubious emerald dealing, as he admits in this interview.
I think that this MacG interview with Errol Musk is a key document of our times. It is a revealing look into the background of the richest and possibly most powerful man in the world.
Below are some excerpts from the transcript of the interview, explanations of South African context, arranged under these themes:
On black friends
On his views on apartheid
On helping people
On how he first made money.
On dealing emeralds on the streets
“It's my children, you know, so they got an axe to grind”
On killing two men who broke into his house
On whether Elon Musk’s mother Maye was beautiful
On Maye Musk’s Nazi- and apartheid-supporting parents
On not beating his wife Maye
On having two children with his stepdaughter (the daughter of his second wife, Heide)
On why Elon Musk pretended to be liberal, and why Errol and Elon Musk fell out
Links to other articles and podcasts on Elon Musk
Below the excerpts are links to other articles and podcasts that can help us to understand the man who would be King of the Cosmos and his family.
The excerpts are from a complete transcript of the interview that I created, edited, and annotated. Paying subscribers to Rhyming Chaos can read the whole transcript here. (If you can’t afford a subscription and need access to it for journalistic purposes or because you are trying to participate in global civil society, write to me by replying to this email with “Scholarship” in the subject line, tell me about your situation, and I’ll give you access for free.)
On black friends
MacG (04:14):
I'm sure the last time you had so many black people in your house were trying to rob you, hey?
Errol Musk (04:33):
No. No, no, no. I got lots of black friends. I had Matthews Phosa [a senior member of the ANC party] here the other day. Yeah. And his crowd. Dr. Chalky. He's a PA for [South African President] Mr. Ramaphosa. And I bought Mr. Ramaphosa’s Bentley, which is in the garage.
On his views on apartheid
Errol Musk (07:23):
Well, you know, we were never supporters of apartheid. I mean anybody with half a brain is not a supporter of apartheid…
However, Musk later says that he spent more than a decade in the South African military, which was primarily dedicated to defending the apartheid government:
Errol Musk (12:48):
Yeah. I was in the military, the South African military for 11 years. Because they had the civil army, the Burgermag, you know, civil army, you know, the civilian army. And so you, it's part-time. And you do a, a period of a year or so part-time. And then you, after that, you go into the army full time. And, and, and some people try to get out, but I was an officer, so I just carried on, you know? Yeah. And I enjoyed the army way. It was nice.
Musk later says black South Africans were better off under apartheid:
MacG (14:56):
I read once that you said that life was better under apartheid than it is now. Is that true?
Errol Musk (15:02):
No. No. I've never said life was better. I have said that, in my opinion now, with no apartheid, first of all, South Africa's at a better place now than it's ever been. So, let's get real. Oh, yes. Of course. Nobody would want to go back. But what I have noticed is that in the times, and here, I'm an engineer, so please understand. I'm not a you know, I'm an engineer. Yeah. I think, like, practically, in the times gone by the let's say the government, white government yeah, provided schools, hospitals, and everything they could for black people. And we all felt responsible for, for, well, I did anyway, for, for helping black people. You know what I mean?
But after that, now it's not like that anymore. So now, today, everybody's for himself.
Despite his alleged opposition to apartheid, Musk says he was close to the former Prime Minister P.W. Botha, a notorious defender of apartheid who refused to testify at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
Errol Musk (28:11):
…in about 1985…you may recall that there was a lot of pressure on South Africa to end apartheid. And as it happened, in my work that I was doing, I knew all these people…P.W. Botha, who was Prime Minister or President [he was Prime Minister from 1978 to 1984, then President from 1984 to 1989], his daughter often stayed with us. And his wife, Elise, often came to our home you know, to visit, to, to bring flowers to us.
On helping people
Errol Musk (21:14):
And then I remember the dean of the faculty of engineering telling us, if you’re an engineer, you mustn't expect to make money because engineering is a special calling to help people, you know? So I thought, ooh, that doesn't sound fun.
On how he first made money
Musk says he first started making money as a consulting engineer on real estate projects, but describes his first real fortune as coming from being a shareholder of a group that developed the Menlyn Park shopping mall in Pretoria:
Errol Musk (26:18):
But I was a shareholder. We are talking about the early seventies. Yes. When, you know, Menlyn was sold, I think I got 400,000 rand. Today. I mean, that would be 40 million today [$2.16 million]. But I mean, in those days, that was a lot of money. You could buy a house for, I don't know, for 15,000 [rand].
On dealing emeralds on the streets
In answer to a question about the emerald mine, Musk says that he became a shareholder in a mine in Zambia owned by some Italian businessmen. But then he goes on to describe how he actually did the emerald business.
And I took the emeralds and then I started selling the emeralds when I came back to South Africa. And I found if you it was hard at first, but I found if you go to the very top jewelers, you know, you have to find the very top jewelers, and then you can sell the emeralds quite easily to the rich people, the people overseas and all that stuff. Because they cost a lot of money. The emeralds, you know, and they, you, they sell, they're very nice jewelry, you know. So I sold emeralds for years. I eventually got a cutter in Eloff Street in Johannesburg [then the heart of the city’s commercial and shopping district] to do cutting and polishing emeralds for me. And I sold emeralds everywhere in England, Europe, Germany.
MacG (34:53):
That's madness, eh?
Errol Musk (34:54):
Austria. New York, everywhere.
MacG (34:57):
Yeah. I read in an article with Business Insider South Africa they said, you claimed you once made more money than you could physically handle from the mine you co-owned: ”We were very wealthy. We had so much money, at times we couldn't even close our safe.”
Errol Musk (35:13):
Well, you know, I mean, you know, it's long ago. So I suppose I can talk now, but when you, when somebody came to you, like after I started cutting emeralds, then I would get calls from the cutters and they would say that they've got somebody who's got a parcel. They call it a parcel of emerald. Rough, rough emerald, you see? And they would say to me, are you interested to buy it? Then I would say, okay, what do they look like? The cutter would say, it's good, you know, it's really good, you know, or it's not so good, or it's good, you know, it's average. Or usually it was good, you know? Because you get very good quality emeralds from Rhodesia, from the old Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, I mean, and, and from Zambia, you know, but not such good quality from South Africa.
But anyway, so I would meet people, you know, and they would show me the emeralds. I would meet them, for example, for example, in the middle of a main street in Johannesburg at 12 o'clock in the midday with all the people walking around by the traffic lights, by the robot [South African word for traffic light], by the traffic light. Because all the people are there, then we stand by the traffic light and they open their parcel. They show it to me. Then I look, then, in my plastic bag next to me, I've got like it looks like a loaf of bread, but it's 50 rand notes. So it's like 50,000 in a plastic bag, you see? But it looks like a loaf of bread. Then they look in the plastic bag, you see, and I tell them it's 50,000.
'Cause you can't go inside a building because they're scared in the building, you will kill them. And take the emeralds, you see. And if I go in, they might take the money, you know, and, and knock me on the head. You understand. So you do it out in the street. So you do these exchanges of the money with the emeralds was with cash. Everything was cash. Even when I sold emeralds through the jewelers, it was cash. It was always a lot of money in cash.
MacG (37:21):
You were swimming in money, eh?
Errol Musk (37:24):
No. Well, yes. Look, in those days, 50 rands was the biggest note, but it was a very big note, you know, it was quite big. Not like the notes today. And so, you know, 50,000 rands was like a a heavy loaf of bread, you know? And I mean sometimes I had as much as 150,000 in a bag. But I would take the money home and put it into the safe, you know, because we used it again to buy more emeralds later on, you know, to keep on going, you know? Yeah. Because we did this for about seven years and the safe was not that big.
And so I would stash the money in there, you know, and I'd tell my two boys, Elon and Kimbal, they can take money from the safe for anything they need. They must just leave a note. A little white note. Sometimes I would open the safe and the notes would all fall out. But, but yeah. No, I did put a lot of money into the safe like that, you know,
“It's my children, you know, so they got an axe to grind”
MacG (38:16):
So, why would Elon then tweet, I think it was December, 2019, he tweeted, you didn't own an emerald mine and “I worked my way through college ending up, $100,000 in student debt”?
Errol Musk (38:31):
Well, you know it's, first of all, it's my children, you know, so they got an axe to grind, you see. But no, I never owned a mine, but I received rough from a mine called Katanga mine in Zimbabwe, from the people that I did the deal with, the airplane. [Katanga is an area where there are a lot of mines in the south of the Democratic People’s Republic of Congo, near the border with Zambia but there does not seem to have ever been a “Katanga Mine” in Zimbabwe, and Errol Musk usually refers to the mine as being in Zambia.]
Elon came up to the mine with me. He was at the mine. Now, so he knows very well. And they also, when they were once in New York, they actually took some stones that I had with me. I used to go overseas, take a few stones with me, and then take them to the good jewelers and then say, would you like to buy these stones?
On killing two men who broke into his house
Errol Musk (44:49):
Well, I only fired two shots. One shot killed two people, and then, and later on, another guy tried to shoot me, and we shot at the same time. And he shot, and I shot, I hit him in the groin, and his shot went into a metal frame that was in front of me. It went, it would've hit me here [points to chest]. But I was standing behind this frame, and it hit the frame, thin frame, an aluminum frame and otherwise would've hit me. Yeah. I would be dead. But unfortunately, he died. And so I only fired two shots, but they fired 52 shots.
MacG (45:22):
52?
Errol Musk (45:24):
The police picked up 52 shells, 52 shells.
MacG (45:28):
While they're trying to get you? All these shots, or they just…? Geez, bro.
Errol Musk (45:32):
They fired 52 shots. I fired two shots. And you know, you know, I'm firing a Magnum, so it's a very powerful gun. And so, you know, a bullet went through two people, you could say. And then I'm not proud of it. I'm not proud of it. You know.
MacG (45:50):
And your daughter, she's still like, she's still, she was
Errol Musk (45:52):
With me the whole time. She was naked. And we actually, with all the shooting, they shot the glass of all the windows out. With all their shooting. The house cost a lot of money to fix afterwards.
On whether Elon Musk’s mother Maye was beautiful
Errol Musk (52:22):
Well, no. Well, Maye at school, was a slightly heavier built girl.
On Maye Musk’s Nazi- and apartheid-supporting parents
Errol Musk (52:28):
Her parents, by the way, were very fanatical in favor of apartheid. This is quite interesting. Her parents came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathized with the Afrikaaner government [see The World According to Elon Musk’s Grandfather for details]. They used to support Hitler and, and all that sort of stuff. But they didn't know, obviously, I don't think they knew what the Germans, what the Nazis were doing. But in Canada, they were in the Nazi, they were in the German party in Canada. And they sympathized with the Germans. So when the Afrikaans government came into power here in 1948, then Maye's father, who was quite an interesting guy, he was a very good pilot. He said he wants to be with the Afrikaans because he agrees with apartheid, you see? You see what I mean? And he came out here with his family.
On not beating his wife Maye
MacG (59:36):
So I also read that Maye said that you were very abusive, physically, abusive.
Errol Musk (59:41):
She made all that up. She made all that up. It came recently. You know, I mean, we've been divorced for 44 years…
…MacG (1:01:58):
I want to read some of the stuff that she said in her book. She alleged that you threatened to cut her face with a razor blade. You called her ugly, boring, stupid.
Errol Musk (1:02:08):
No. No.
MacG (1:02:09):
Hence you didn't have friends. You cheated on her.
Errol Musk (1:02:11):
No.
MacG (1:02:12):
“Everybody I knew I called him the pig because he treated me so badly,” she told Harper's Bazaar. “The pig.”
Errol Musk (1:02:17):
No.
MacG (1:02:18):
…Adding that, she felt scared and embarrassed to speak about your behavior. So these are some of the stuff that she said
Errol Musk (1:02:26):
Completely untrue.
MacG (1:02:27):
But my thing is, why would your ex-wife say that, your kids say that? Like, what do they benefit from saying all of…
Errol Musk (1:02:33):
No, they never saw anything like that. So they just maybe agreeing with her. But I mean, no, no, there's no truth in it at all.
MacG (1:02:40):
What, what do they benefit from, from lying?
Errol Musk (1:02:42):
I don't know. I, I really don’t know why she's done it. I've spoken about this on several things. All I can say is that people, if they hurt, if they feel hurt or if they feel they got a raw deal or something, they might do that kind of thing. But there's absolutely no truth in that.
On having two children with his stepdaughter (the daughter of his second wife, Heide)
Errol Musk (1:11:05):
Well, you know Heide [his second wife] and I were divorced in 2004. You know, 20 years ago.
And then in about 2014, her daughter, who I hadn't seen for years. Even when Hedie and I were married her daughter lived with other people, so I never really saw much of her. Her daughter contacted me in about 2014 to say that she's struggling. She's got no money, and she's battling, she's living with some guy in a storeroom, in an old shopping center, you know, poor, you know, really poor. And so I went to, I, she said, can I help her? And I said, well, yes, okay. So, I mean, I went to see her in the Cape area [meaning either around Cape Town or somewhere in Western Cape Province]. Yeah. And I went to this place where, where she was, and she was like, thin, thin, very thin, and terribly poor and everything.
And so then I started helping her with a little bit of money, you know, to buy her some clothes and, and she was already about 29 years old. And then and then I helped her for about two years. Every week I sent her money, you know, for food and, and toiletries, and stuff. And I even gave her, gave them a car, her and her boyfriend a car to use, a secondhand car. And then I, then one day, in about 2016 or so, 2017, she contacted me to say that her boyfriend, I never really saw this guy more than twice. I never seen him more than twice. But he threw her out of the place where they're staying. And she's now on the street, you know? And she's living with, she's got all her clothes, and she's sitting on the street.
So I said to her, she's a very classy girl, but this is what happens to people. So then I said to her, well, you must have, you got the car? She said, yeah, she's got the car. I said, well, put the stuff in the car and come here. You know. So she came through to here where I am, where my daughter was still living with me, Rose, who was still at school, you know. And the two of us were living here. And then, she stayed with us. And then after a while we, when I got on very well, and, you know, we sort of started a relationship…
…Yeah. I mean, 30 years, not young. It's not a chicken any more. You know, it's a grownup woman. And she already had a child. She already had a daughter of eight.
…She stayed here for about two, three weeks. And then her and her boyfriend made up. Well, he cried and he said he wants her to come back. So she said, all right, she's going back. So she went back to the boyfriend, the one who had thrown her out…
…So then after about two months, she came to see me. She said, can she come and see me? Because I used to send her money through the bank. I didn't go and give them money. I sent her money. You follow? I never saw her. So then she phoned me and said, can, she was living in Darling [a small town about 75 kilometers / 45 miles from Cape Town]. And then she asked me if she can come and see me. So I said, all right. So she came through here like 60 kilometers [37 miles] away, you know?
So she came through here and she told me that she's pregnant. So I said to her, well, you know, it can't be me, you know? She said, no, it's you. I said, well, how can it be me? She said, well, you the only one that I had a relationship with…So I said, oh. So then I had a DNA test done, had to have it done in Canada. And then the DNA test came back. Ja. I'm a hundred percent the father of the child, you know? So then you know what was I gonna say?
MacG (1:15:57):
And you've had another kid since then, right? You've got, so you've got two kids?
Errol Musk (1:16:02):
Yes.
So we talk regularly and you know, I mean, we are, you know, still see each other all the time. I provide her with a little house.
On why Elon Musk pretended to be liberal, and why Errol and Elon Musk fell out
MacG (1:17:14):
So the fact that you know, the papers have been writing that you had a fallout with Elon because of this is so that's not true.
Errol Musk (1:17:21):
No, no, no. I had a fallout with Elon because of my support for Trump.
MacG (1:17:28):
Is it? No ways!
Errol Musk (1:17:30):
Ja. In 2016 you know, I started when, when, look, I'm not into wokeness and gayness and transgender stuff, and what these people in America and these Biden and them, and I like a country to be well run. You know, I like a country to be well run. So when they were living in America and Trump started running, I followed Trump's career because he was in the same work as me.
MacG (1:17:58):
Property and all this stuff. Same.
Errol Musk (1:18:01):
Exactly. And you know, he turned the west side of New York City…It used to be old railway yards, you know, really bad places. And he turned that into the most beautiful apartment buildings and malls and everything that you've ever seen in your life. The whole west side of New York.
I mean, he tried, it was so hard for him to do that, but he did it. Anyway, I followed his career and then when he said, he is going to stand for president, I said, no, he's a good man. Elon and Kimbal, they…I started writing and telling people that Trump's a good man. And then, but he was very, Trump was very unpopular with the Democrats.
MacG (1:18:46):
Elon was a Democrat at the time?
Errol Musk (1:18:47):
Well, yes. Because if you go over to America from South Africa and you're a white person, you have to, in those days, you had to not be showing that you are supportive of anything but being like a Democrat. You get away with it better or something like that.
Although, you know, my daughters used to cry because she used to say, used to say that the American girls treat them very bad because they're white girls from South Africa. So I said to my daughter, just ask them, where's the Red Indians? And they won't answer because they killed them all.
So, anyway, so anyway, in 2016, it was my 70th birthday, and Elon and Kimbal came out here. They brought 20 people from America. To Cape Town. And we had a big party in a restaurant in Cape Town for my 70th birthday party. And the people that came were all from Hollywood, all Hollywood actors, and one was a owner of Google. One of the people who started Google.
MacG (1:19:51):
You don't remember these Hollywood actors?
Errol Musk (1:19:53):
Yes. Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence, Jon Favreau.
MacG (1:20:01):
Those are big boys, huh?
Errol Musk (1:20:02):
Yeah. They'd made this movie called The Jungle Book. Anyway, during that lunch, which lasted for hours Jon Favreau said to me you know, with a big laugh, he said, we believe you support Trump. Yes. So I said, yes, yes, I support Trump. So everybody laughed. Ha ha ha…
MacG (1:20:20):
Ha ha. Yeah.
Errol Musk (1:20:21):
And then they asked me, why do you support Trump? I said, well, I think he's a good, solid businessman. He knows what he's doing. And you know, he's not messing around. And, you know, Trump has more, well, if you want to talk about race things, Trump has more awards for helping poor people and people across the race spectrum.
Errol Musk (1:20:42):
And they said, no, he's a terrible person. I said, no, he's not. Anyway, after the lunch, Elon and Kimbal, I've never seen Kimbal so angry. He said to me, you know, that I've embarrassed them in front of their friends. You know, all that sort of stuff. And Elon said It's evil to support Trump, but he had been brainwashed by these Democrats. Because now Elon supports Trump.
MacG (1:21:07):
Yeah. I mean, the election is happening right now as we speaking. And it looks like Donald Trump might win. And Elon had a big part play in that, you know, especially after he bought X. And yes, he's been campaigning for Trump.
Errol Musk (1:21:20):
Everyone will be better off if Trump wins with these people that are, they pretend these other people, that they're going to do this and this and this.
Links to other articles and podcasts on Elon Musk
Sam Harris: The Trouble with Elon
Facebook post by his former collaborator, Philip Low, CEO of NeuroVigil, on Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes
New York Times: What Elon Wants — podcast with Ezra Klein and Kara Swisher
Tortoise Media: Elon’s Spies podcast
Muskwatch: How do you explain Trump's abrupt pivot on China? Elon Musk.
Rolling Stone: Like Father Like Son: Elon Musk’s Dad Has Secret Second Kid With Stepdaughter
The Hill: Musk’s mother urges him to sue CNN over gesture [i.e. Nazi salute] segment
ProPublica: DOGE’s Millions: As Musk and Trump Gut Government, Their Ax-Cutting Agency Gets Cash Infusion
Elon Musk tweets:
November 13, 2024: “The Hammer of Justice is coming”
November 16, 2024: “There will be consequences for those who pushed foreign interference hoaxes. The Hammer of Justice is coming.”November 27, 2024: “Vindman has committed treason and belongs behind bars”
November 27, 2024: “Vindman is on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty”
February 3, 2025, to a journalist who tweeted out the names of DOGE employees, whose Twitter account has since been suspended: “You have committed a crime.” (It’s not a crime)
November 15, 2023: “You have said the actual truth” in response to someone tweeting: “Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much.”