Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:47, 6 September 2023

Errol Musk (born 1946) is a South African retired politician, electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer who once co-owned a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.

He is the father of business magnate and billionaire Elon Musk, restaurateur Kimbal Musk, and filmmaker Tosca Musk. He was married to Maye Musk and also to Heide Musk (née Bezuidenhout), with whom he has two children, Alexandra Musk and Rose Musk.

Early life and education

Errol Musk was born in 1946 in Pretoria to Walter Henry James Musk and Cora Amelia Robinson. His father was a South African veteran of World War II and his mother was British.

Career and investments

Musk was a successful electrical engineer and mechanical engineer in 1970. His career also included working as a pilot, a sailor, a consultant, and a property developer, before retiring early.

He was the part-owner of an emerald mine on Lake Tanganyika in Zambia that he bought for £40,000, funded by selling an airplane for £80,000. In a 2018 interview with Business Insider, Musk stated that as a result of the emerald mine "we had so much money we couldn't even close our safe." In November 2022, Snopes debunked rumours linking the mine to slavery and apartheid, and linked to an article published in The New Yorker that referenced Musk's part ownership of the mine.

In an interview with The New York Times, he claims to have been elected to the Pretoria City Council in 1972 as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party.

Errol Musk's claims that he invested in his son Elon Musk's software company Zip2 have been rejected by Elon Musk.

Personal life

Musk met Maye Haldeman when she was about 11 years old and they remained childhood friends and dated turbulently as young adults. After a period of being separated, Musk proposed to marry Haldeman. She initially rejected, but later agreed, with the couple marrying in 1970.

They had three children: Elon Reeve Musk born on 28 June 1971, Kimbal Reeve Musk born on 20 September 1972, and Tosca Musk born on 20 July 1974. The family lived in Pretoria, where Maye worked as a dietician and a model. Musk told Agence France-Presse that he was a strict father who raised his children with discipline and austerity. Errol and Maye divorced in 1979. Maye later stated that Errol beat her. Maye took custody of their three children, although later, Elon Musk and Kimbal moved in with their father.

In 1998, Musk shot and killed three out of six or seven burglars who forced their way into his Lone Hill home and who opened fire upon detection. He was acquitted of all charges.

Although both The Telegraph and Cosmopolitan reported in 2022 that Musk was married to Heide Bezuidenhout for eighteen years, he said on Australian radio show The Kyle and Jackie O Show that the marriage only lasted two years. During the relationship, Musk fathered Alexandra and Asha with Bezuidenhout and helped her raise Jana Bezuidenhout, her young daughter from a previous relationship. At the start of their marriage, Jana was four years old and lived with the couple.

Later in life, after splitting from Heide Bezuidenhout, Musk fathered two children with Jana (then his former stepdaughter); a son born in 2017 and a daughter born in 2019. Musk described the first child as unplanned. At the time of their daughter's birth, according to The Times, Musk was 72 and Jana Bezuidenhout was 30 years old. As of 2022, Musk and Jana Bezuidenhout were no longer living together. Musk has a total of seven children and as of 2022, he is estranged from his son Elon.

See also

• Musk family
• Mining in Zambia
• Politics of South Africa

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. ^ Anna Crowley Redding, (2019). Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World. United States: Feiwel & Friends.
3. "Who are Elon Musk's relatives?". The Independent. 9 December 2022. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
4. ^ Vlismas, Michael (2022). Elon Musk: Risking it All. Jonathan Ball. ISBN 978-1776191857.
5. 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.
6. Smith, Adam (28 June 2021). "50 years of Elon Musk's huge wealth, from emeralds to SpaceX and Tesla". The Independent. Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
7. Smith, Adam (28 October 2022). "How Elon Musk made his money - from emeralds to SpaceX and Tesla". The Independent. Archived from the original on 27 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
8. ^ 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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. Archived from the original on 11 November 2022. Retrieved 5 May 2022.
12. ^ Kumar, Abhishek (1 January 2021). Elon Musk A Complete Biography. Prabhat Prakashan. ISBN 978-9355211347.
13. ^ 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.
14. Dolan, Kerry A. (2 July 2015). "How To Raise A Billionaire: An Interview With Elon Musk's Father, Errol Musk". Forbes. Archived from the original on 3 July 2015. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
15. Paloma, Alfageme (2 June 2022). "El padre de Elon Musk dice que la ambición de su hijo se debe a la educación austera que recibió: "Fui un padre estricto"". El País (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
16. "The Elon Musk Show, Series 1, Episode 2". BBC 2. 19 October 2022. Archived from the original on 6 January 2023. Retrieved 6 January 2023.
17. Friend, Tad (24 August 2009). "Plugged In". New Yorker. 85 (25): 50–59.
18. Strauss, N. (15 November 2017). "Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 27 April 2022. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
19. ^ 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.
20. ^ Farah, Lynn (13 August 2022). "'Completely normal': Elon Musk's dad Errol on dating his stepdaughter". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 3 January 2023. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
21. ^ 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.
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. Thompson, Sophie (1 August 2022). "Errol Musk explains why he got his stepdaughter pregnant". indy100. Archived from the original on 11 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
24. ^ Hasibuan, Linda (15 July 2022). "Ayah Elon Musk Punya Bayi dari Hubungan dengan Putri Tirinya". CNBC Indonesia (in Indonesian). Archived from the original on 11 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
25. Farah, Lynn (15 June 2022). "Meet Elon Musk's controversial father, Errol". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
26. Groß, Antonia (15 July 2022). "Errol Musk hat Kind mit Stieftochter: "Wir sind zum Fortpflanzen auf der Welt"". Berliner Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2022.

v t e Elon Musk
Main	Awards and honors Filmography Legal affairs Tornetta v. Musk, et al. Views Wealth
Companies	Zip2 X.com PayPal SpaceX (Starlink) Tesla, Inc. Tesla Energy criticism TSLAQ lawsuits OpenAI Neuralink The Boring Company Boring test tunnel SolarCity Thud X Corp. Twitter, Inc. Twitter Twitter under Elon Musk Acquisition of Twitter Twitter Files December 2022 suspensions Block in Brazil xAI
Depictions	Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2015) "The Musk Who Fell to Earth" (2015) The Space Barons (2018) Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (2019) "One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty" (2019) Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century (2021) Return to Space (2022) Elon Musk's Crash Course (2022) Elon Musk (2023)
People	Musk family Maye Musk (mother) Kimbal Musk (brother) Tosca Musk (sister) Joshua N. Haldeman (grandfather) Lyndon Rive (cousin) Justine Musk (first wife) Talulah Riley (second wife) Grimes (partner) Shivon Zilis (partner)
Related	America PAC Astra Nova School Billionaire space race Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster ElonJet Hyperloop RBG PAC Snailbrook, Texas Texas Institute of Technology and Science
Category

• Biography
• South Africa
• Business
• Politics
• Minerals

• Living people
• South African mining businesspeople
• South African sailors
• South African engineers
• South African businesspeople
• South African people of British descent
• People from Pretoria
• Musk family
• 1946 births
• Businesspeople from Johannesburg
• Elon Musk
• South African political people
• White South African anti-apartheid activists