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Errol Graham Musk is a retired South African engineer, politician, and businessman.

Early life

Errol Musk was born in South Africa. His mother, Cora Amelia, was British and his father Walter Henry James Musk was a South African army sergeant.

He attended Clapham High School, where he met and pursued Maye Haldeman. The pair married in 1970. The family lived in Pretoria, where Maye worked as a dietician and a model. Their first child, Elon Reeve, was born in 1971, named after his wife's grandfather J. Elon Haldeman with Reeve from her maternal grandmother's maiden name.

In the early 1980s, Musk built a lodge in the Timbavati Game Reserve to rent to tourists.

Career

On March 9, 1972, Musk was elected as an indepedent to represent Sunnyside on the Pretoria City Council. In 1974, he made his first failed run for the South African Parliament. In 1981, he made a second failed run for the national parliament. He later recalled that in 1976, two local men were arrested for making threatening phone calls.

In 1979, Musk and wife Maye divorced .

He became a member of the recently-formed Progressive Federal Party and ran as their nominee in the 1981 election. In 1983, his resignation from the party was front page news.

Musk studied electromechanical engineering at the University of Pretoria, worked as an electrical and mechanical engineering consultant and developed properties. He specialised in retail and office property development. Musk owned "one of the biggest houses in Pretoria" thanks to his lucrative engineering business which took on "large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base." Musk also owned an auto parts store.

In 1986, Musk acquired the output of three Zambian emerald mines, though he could not acquire the actual mines themselves. Explained Musk: "If you registered it, you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you".

Celebrity father and husband

In the 21st century, the former South African politician achieved international notoriety for his controversial familial relations.

In 1979 Musk divorced his first wife; Shortly after, Musk, then aged 45, married Heide Bezuidenhout, a 25-year old he described as "one of the best looking women I’ve ever seen in my life". They had two children. The pair divorced in 2004.

In a 2018 interview with Business Insider South Africa, Musk referred to his wealth, including an emerald mine when his son Elon was a teenager. In response to rumours related to the mine and Elon Musk, a November 2022 report by Snopes relied on news reporting to find in the 1980s, Errol "at some point owned "a stake in an emerald mine" near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia". The 2023 Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, titled Elon Musk, describes Errol's involvement in the emerald business and denies the existence of an ownership interest by Errol in an emerald mine.

In 2018, The Telegraph reported that he had a child with Jana Bezuidenhout, his former stepdaughter from that marriage, then age 30, who had been four years old at the time Musk married her mother.

In July 2022, Musk gave an interview to the tabloid newspaper The Sun, announcing that he and Jana Bezuidenhout had another child. Musk has a total of seven children and according to People in November 2022.

He has been both a pilot and sailor.

He was married to model Maye Musk. He is the father of business magnate Elon Musk, restaurateur Kimbal Musk, and filmmaker Tosca Musk.

See also

• Musk family
• Mining in Zambia
• Politics of South Africa
• Internal resistance to apartheid

References

1. ^ Hull, Dana; May, Patrick (20 April 2014). "Exploring the otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk". Buffalo News. Archived from the original on 17 April 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
2. Vance, Ashlee (2017). Elon Musk: Tesla, Paypal, SpaceX: l'entrepreneur qui va changer le monde (in Portuguese). Eyrolles. p. 40. ISBN 9782212594379.
3. ^ Holson, Laura M. (30 April 2016). "At 68, Maye Musk, the Mother of Elon, Is Reclaiming the Spotlight". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 28 June 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
4. ^ Vlismas, Michael (2022). Elon Musk: Risking it All. Jonathan Ball Publishers. ISBN 978-1776191857.
5. Isaacson, ch 3
6. Eligon, John; Chutel, Lynsey (5 May 2022). "Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 11 November 2022. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
7. "Reaction against the Establishment." (9 Mar 1972) Pretoria News, cited in Isaacson
8. ^ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28794361/errol-musk-death-threats-elon-gun-police-escort/
9. Friend, Tad (24 August 2009). "Plugged In". New Yorker. Vol. 85, no. 25. pp. 50–59.
10. ^ Sussman, Gary (2003). The referendum in F.W. de Klerk's war of manoeuvre: An historical institutionalist account of the 1992 referendum (PDF) (PhD thesis). London School of Economics.
11. "The reported resignation of Errol Musk, the PFP candidate for Sunnyside (Pretoria) election was made a front-page story. Die Burger. 4 October 1983"
12. Ashlee, Vance (2017). Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Young Readers' Edition. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062463289.
13. Vance
14. https://web.archive.org/web/20141010001525/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/24/plugged-in
15. Isaacson ch 1
16. ^ Crilly, Rob (25 March 2018). "Elon Musk's father has baby with step-daughter he has known since she was four". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 26 April 2021. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
17. ^ Sager, Jessica (7 November 2022). "Who Is Elon Musk's Estranged Father? All About Errol Musk". People. Archived from the original on 24 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
18. Wet, Phillip de (23 February 2018). "'We had so much money we couldn't even close our safe': Elon Musk's Dad tells BI about the family's insanely casual attitude to wealth". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 28 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
19. Liles, Jordan (17 November 2022). "What We Know About Elon Musk and the Emerald Mine Rumor". Snopes. Archived from the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
20. Pearce, Matt (11 September 2023). "The biggest ideas and pettiest rages in Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk biography". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
21. Ball, Molly; Kluger, Jeffrey; De la Garza, Alejandro (13 December 2021). "Elon Musk Is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year". Time. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
22. Sharma, Shweta (15 July 2022). "Elon Musk's father confirms second child with his own stepdaughter - report". The Independent. Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
23. Biggs, Jade (16 July 2022). "Elon Musk's dad reveals he fathered an "unplanned" child with his stepdaughter". Cosmopolitan. Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2022.

External links

• South African patent number 0669 of 1996 for "Process and equipment to repair constant velocity joints.", Patent journal, including trademarks, designs, and copyright in cinematograph films. (March 1996). South Africa: Government Printer of South Africa. Volume 29, p149. Available from the New York Public Library.