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Businessman Elon Musk's family includes notable figures such as his mother Maye Musk, model and author, his father Errol Musk, a businessman and politician, siblings Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk, and cousin Lyndon River.

Errol Musk

Errol Musk is a retired South African engineer, politician, and businessman. Beginning in the 2010s, Musk was featured in media documenting his relationships with family including his wives, children, and former stepdaughter.

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 dated 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 Musk, was born in 1971, named after his wife's grandfather J. Elon Haldeman with Reeve from her maternal grandmother's maiden name.

On 9 March 1972, Musk was elected as an independent to represent Sunnyside on the Pretoria City Council.

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 amid divisions over a constitutional referendum 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 1979, Musk and wife Maye divorced . Maye's book recalls that at the time of the divorce, he owned two homes, a yacht, a plane, five luxury cars, and a truck.

Maye recounts a time during their divorce when she sought refuge at a neighbor's home after Errol showed up with a knife looking for her. After the divorce, Musk repeatedly sued his ex-wife for custody of their children. Musk was briefly married to a wife, Sue.

In the early 1980s, Musk built a lodge in the Timbavati Game Reserve to rent to tourists. In 1986, Musk acquired the output of three Zambian emerald mines, though he could not acquire the actual mines themselves. In interviews with Walter Issacson, Musk explained: "If you registered it, you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you".

In the 21st century, the former South African politician achieved notoriety for his relationships to ex-wife supermodel Maye Musk, his sons including businessman Elon Musk and restaurateur Kimbal Musk, his daughter filmmaker Tosca Musk, and his step-daughter turned partner Jana Bezuidenhout.

In 2014, Musk gave an interview to American media about his son Elon. In 2017, Musk was interviewed by Neil Strauss of Rolling Stone for a profile of Elon titled "The Architect of Tomorrow". In that piece Errol recalled that he had once shot and killed "three out of five or six armed people" who had broken into his home in self-defense. Elon described his father Errol as a "terrible human being", adding: "Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."

In March 2018, it was reported that Musk had fathered a child with his adult stepdaughter. In the early 1990s, Musk, then aged 45, had 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. His partner, Jana Bezuidenhout, had been his stepdaughter from that marriage and had been four years old at the time Musk married her mother and became her stepfather.

In February 2018, Musk made headlines when he referred to his wealth during Elon's teen years in an interview with Business Insider South Africa. Musk described having "so much money we couldn't even close our safe" and mentioned his emerald dealings. Snopes confirmed that Errol "at some point owned "a stake in an emerald mine" near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia".

In 2019, Musk's ex-wife Maye published her memoir, A Woman Makes a Plan, a book in which she characterized her marriage as abusive and alleged Errol had been violent.

In July 2022, Musk gave an interview to the tabloid newspaper The Sun, announcing that he and Jana Bezuidenhout had had another child. Musk has a total of seven children, according to People magazine in November 2022. On 1 August 2022, Musk appeared on The Kyle and Jackie O Show, an Australian radio show and made headlines for saying he was "not proud" of his son.

In April 2023, Musk described his emerald mine as an "under the table" operation. Musk was interviewed by author Walter Isaacson for his 2023 biography of Musk's son Elon, which discussed Errol Musk at length. In June 2024, he gave an interview to The Sun tabloid in which he claimed Elon had upgraded his home security system.

Further reading

• Musk, Maye (31 December 2019) A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success Penguin Random House
• Isaacson, Walter (12 September 2023) Elon Musk Simon and Schuster

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. 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.
6. "Reaction against the Establishment." (9 Mar 1972) Pretoria News, cited in Isaacson
7. ^ Isaacson, Walter (12 September 2023). Elon Musk. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-3985-2751-5 – via Google Books.
8. ^ 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.
9. "The reported resignation of Errol Musk, the PFP candidate for Sunnyside (Pretoria) election was made a front-page story. Die Burger. 4 October 1983"
10. Friend, Tad (10 October 2014). "Plugged In - The New Yorker". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 28 June 2024.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
11. Friend, Tad (24 August 2009). "Plugged In". New Yorker. Vol. 85, no. 25. pp. 50–59.
12. ^ Musk, Maye (31 December 2019). A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-9848-7851-9 – via Google Books.
13. "Apr 13, 2014, page 10 - Oakland Tribune at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com.
14. ^ Strauss, Neil (15 November 2017). "Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow". Rolling Stone.
15. "Jun 03, 2020, page A13 - Evening Standard at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com.
16. Mier, Tomás (14 July 2022). "Like Father Like Son: Elon Musk's Dad Has Secret Second Kid With Stepdaughter". Rolling Stone.
17. ^ 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.
18. 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.
19. ^ 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. "Maye Musk on Escaping Domestic Abuse and Raising Three Geniuses (Including Elon) on Her Own". Harper's BAZAAR. 15 November 2019.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. Oladipo, Gloria (1 August 2022). "Elon Musk's father says he isn't proud of his son". The Guardian.
26. Mahdawi, Arwa (25 April 2023). "What's that going up in flames? Why, it's Elon Musk's reputation". The Guardian.
27. 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.
28. Tabahriti, Sam. "Elon Musk increased security for his 76-year-old father Errol amid kidnapping fears, report says". Business Insider.

• Biography
• South Africa
• Business
• Politics
• Minerals

• 1946 births
• Living people
• South African mining businesspeople
• South African engineers
• South African businesspeople
• South African people of British descent
• Musk family
• South African political people
• Politicians from the Western Cape
• Progressive Federal Party politicians