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The father of the world’s richest man Elon Musk has insisted that his son isn’t racist, claiming that his son had Black friends growing up: his family’s servants.
Errol Musk, Elon’s 79-year-old father, told the Washington Post this week that his children were not interested in “political nonsense” — despite growing up in apartheid-era South Africa.
His evidence that his son wasn’t racist? Elon was friends with the family’s Black servants.
“We had several black servants who were their friends,” he said in an email to the newspaper.
Errol was responding to questions about his son’s opposition to workplace programs focusing on diversity and equity.
Elon’s father seemed to miss the old days of South Africa, describing the country during the years of his children’s youth as a “well-run, law-abiding country with virtually no crime at all.”
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During apartheid-era South Africa, the Black majority African population was kept largely in poverty and lived under a strict racially based segregation. Apartheid ended in 1990, when Elon was 18 years old.
Errol told the Washington Post that he imported emeralds from an unregistered mine in Zambia, which “helped me and my two boys sustain ourselves during the collapse of Apartheid” in South Africa.
Elon has tried to distance himself from his father’s emerald mining background. In 2014 he bragged about his father’s involvement in the mine, but in 2021 — when he came under scrutiny for his connection to the mine — he insisted there was “no evidence whatsoever of an ’emerald mine'” connected to his past.
In a tweet denying the story from March 25, 2021, Musk said an article that accounts of his father owning an emerald mine were false. He also said he arrived in Canada in 1989 by himself with only $2,500 Canadian dollars to his name. He further insisted he paid his own way through college, accruing $100,000 in student loan debt and claimed he started his first business without funding and with his own personal computer.
Elon —at least according to his biographer Walter Isaacson — was telling the truth about the mine. His father did not own the mine, as had been reported, but did import emeralds from the mine, according to Business Insider.
Errol also spoke to Isaacson about the mine, and claimed he imported his emeralds from an unregistered mine because otherwise “you would wind up with nothing because the Blacks would take everything from you.”
One of Elon’s old schoolmates, Rudolph Pienaar, also spoke to the Washington Post and described the billionaire’s youth as living in a “bubble of entitlement.”
“I am not sure if Elon can conceive of systematic discrimination and struggle because that’s not his experience,” he told the newspaper. “His life now in some ways is how it was under apartheid — rich and entitled with the entire society built to sustain him and his ilk.”
The Independent has requested comment from Elon.
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The billionaire faced criticism after his takeover of Twitter in 2022 after his policy changes allowed a slew of verified accounts posting pro-Nazi information — including speeches from Adolf Hitler — to exist on the social media platform, according to NBC News.
Since then, his alignment with the far-right has only grown more brazen. During Donald Trump’s second-term inauguration celebration, Elon threw a salute that many identified as a “Nazi” salute, though his defenders insisted it was just a “Roman” salute.
Elon responded to the allegations by posting a message to X — formerly Twitter — full of puns using the names of Hitler’s Nazi aides.
