Technology3.10.2024

Big lie about Elon Musk’s childhood in South Africa

As Elon Musk increasingly became a lightning rod for political controversy, an anecdote about his father briefly owning a stake in a Zambian emerald mine has transformed into evidence among detractors that his success was ill-gotten.

Critics like to quip that Musk’s wealth was built on a pyramid of privilege capstoned by an “apartheid emerald mine,” while proponents might argue that there was no mine.

Musk himself has said that he no longer believes the mine existed and that it was one of his father’s tall tales.

As a half-joke, Musk offered to pay a million dogecoin (R1.8 million) last year for proof of the mine’s existence.

Based on the information at hand, the truth is somewhere between these stories.

While it will probably be impossible to prove or disprove the existence of the mine conclusively, even if you accept that Musk received some financial support from his father, that was not how he funded his businesses.

Musk’s father, Errol, spoke to MyBroadband and reiterated that the mine was real and helped keep his family in a comfortable life during tough economic times.

However, Errol has also said in other interviews that the financial support he provided after Elon left South Africa was limited.

He said Elon didn’t really ask for money while at university in the United States and worked several jobs to earn an income.

Although Errol says the mine was real, he rejected claims that Apartheid had anything to do with it.

“The mine was in Zambia, so Apartheid did not apply. It had no meaning or use,” he told MyBroadband.

Errol said that he came into the mine by pure fluke.

During more prosperous times, he had bought a Cessna 421 Golden Eagle aircraft, but by late 1985, he needed to sell it.

He said that chartering the plane through Dave Novick at the now-defunct Comair had made owning it worthwhile.

However, after PW Botha delivered his infamous Rubicon speech on 15 August 1985, Errol said South Africa’s economy went down like a rock.

After finding a buyer in England, he set off, only to find that his flight plan through Saudi Arabia fell over Eid, increasing the cost of his landing and parking.

He was told there would be no landing or parking fees if he delayed a few days, so he detoured to Lake Tanganyika because he had always wanted to see it.

There, he met a Panamanian company building roads, an airstrip, and other infrastructure at Kasaba Bay.

They enquired about the plane and said they would match the price (in dollars or pounds) he had been offered in England.

“I agreed. We still keep up acquaintances,” Errol told MyBroadband.

They later suggested that for half the money back, he would get a stake in an emerald mine they had, and they would regularly supply him gems mined from it, starting with 108 cut emeralds.

Errol said they continued to supply rough emeralds for about five years.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla. Photographer: Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg

Errol said it was a cash business, with the deal done on a handshake. There was no paperwork and therefore no way to prove whether he had a stake in the mine one way or the other after all these years.

“It was a good business. Exciting, and also kind of crooked and sexy, if you know what I mean.”

Errol told MyBroadband that the income from the sale of cut emeralds allowed them to live a fairly good life between 1985 and 1994, which he said was South Africa’s most trying time. Elon was 14 in 1985.

“People in South Africa were either leaving in droves or having to move to trailer parks,” Errol said.

“My field, consulting engineering for new buildings, factories, and so on, just dropped dead. Architects were making hats, belts, and shoes to get by.”

The Musks, on the other hand, continued to live in Waterkloof. Errol said they got to keep their bush lodge, their farm in Plettenberg Bay, and travel abroad.

However, he said the emerald business took a hit in 1990 when the Russians launched a lab-grown variant at a tenth of the price per carat as mined gems.

By then, Elon was already in Canada.

Some accounts say he was dodging the draft into Apartheid South Africa’s military.

Biographer Ashlee Vance wrote that Elon had applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, Maye, with the goal of getting into the United States to further his studies.

While waiting for his application to be processed, Elon attended the University of Pretoria for five months.

Errol’s version was that Elon had selected the University of Pretoria for an economics degree because he didn’t like the University of Cape Town.

In a 2022 interview on YouTube, Errol said he noticed that his son was getting depressed during his first semester at Tuks.

That was when he asked if he would prefer to attend university in the United States. Elon left 11 days later.

Errol told MyBroadband that avoiding military service in South Africa had nothing to do with the decision.

“We never discussed the South African military. I knew that university would defer any call-up,” he said.

Errol Musk

Errol said that Elon left South Africa on 11 June 1989. He was 17, turning 18 at the end of that month.

“It was the start of the summer holidays there, so he had plenty of time to check out where he might want to go to university.”

Vance, who published a book about Elon in 2015, wrote that he stayed with a second cousin in Saskatchewan and worked odd jobs — including at their farm and a lumber mill.

He enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he earned degrees in physics and economics at the institution’s Wharton school.

“I paid my own way through college — through student loans, scholarships, working jobs — and ended up with $100,000 of student debt,” Musk told Vance in a wide-ranging follow-up interview in 2020.

Errol confirmed that Elon didn’t really ask him for money while at university and that his son came up with ways to earn an income and put himself through school.

The Guardian previously reported that Elon hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition.

After earning his degrees, Musk was accepted to a graduate programme in materials science at Stanford University in 1995. However, he did not enrol and instead decided to join the Internet boom.

Elon said he applied for a job at web browser company Netscape but never received a response.

After failing to get a job at Netscape, he co-founded Global Link Information Network, later renamed Zip2, with Greg Kouri and brother Kimbal Musk.

Zip2 was an online city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages. They sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million in cash.

This was Elon’s first big business success, and he received $22 million for his 7% share of the company.

Errol said the only financial support he provided during that time was selling his yacht and sending $30,000 to Elon and Kimbal while they were getting Zip2 off the ground.

“That little bridge that I sent them, small as it was, Kimble told me, ‘Dad, without that money, we wouldn’t have got through.'”

Elon’s version of events is very different.

“I started my first company with $2,500, and I had one computer and a car that I bought for $1,400, and $100,000 in student debt,” he told Vance in 2020.

“When I told my father I was leaving, he said I was going to fail and would be back in three months,” he added.

“It would have been great if someone was paying for my college, but my dad had neither the ability nor the inclination to do so.”

Elon Musk with his mother (Maye) and brother (Kimbal) when the brothers founded their first company together, Zip2

Elon rolled his windfall from Zip2 into X.com, which ultimately became PayPal. He kept the X.com domain and has repurposed it to rebrand Twitter.

Ebay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, earning Elon $176 million.

This he rolled into several new ventures, including founding SpaceX and buying into Tesla.

He effectively staked his entire net worth on the two companies. After three launch failures, SpaceX — and Elon — were famously one failed launch away from bankruptcy.

Today, Elon Musk is the world’s wealthiest man according to the Bloomberg and Forbes Billionaires indices, with an estimated net worth of over $260 billion (R4.5 trillion).

Whether you believe the father or son’s version of events, Elon’s business ventures were not bankrolled by a vast family fortune.

As Vance put it: “He grew up in South Africa and had the good fortune of doing so in an upper-middle-class home. But that’s more or less where the good fortune ended.”

His parents divorced, he was badly bullied at school, and his relationship with his father is complicated, to say the least.

Perhaps an argument may be made that before 1985, Errol had achieved a more than upper-middle-class lifestyle for his family.

Errol said he owned several properties, including a house in Waterkloof, a rental lodge in the Timbavati private game reserve, and a farm in Plettenberg Bay.

He also had a private plane and a yacht.

However, after his engineering and then emerald business collapsed, that lifestyle quickly began evaporating.

Moreover, by Errol’s own account, Elon never asked for money while he was at university in the United States, and he did not bankroll any of his ventures.

Elon had the benefit of a good basic education — at public schools, not private — and the good luck of having a Canadian-born mother, making it easier for him to access North America.

On balance, he was probably at a disadvantage to most middle-class Americans hoping for a break in high tech, especially those lucky enough to be born in Silicon Valley between 1940 and 1980.

Whatever else you might think of him, Elon is as self-made as any self-made billionaire can be.

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