One of Errol Musk's paternal grandmothers was descended from the Dutch Free Burghers.[1] His mother Cora Robinson was English from Liverpool and his father Walter Henry J. Musk was South African.[2][3]
7 Three with Maye: Elon, Kimbal, Tosca; Two with Heide, Two with Jana
Parents
Walter Henry James Musk (father)
Cora Amelia Robinson Musk (mother)
Errol Graham Musk[8] is a retired South African engineer, politician, and businessman born in South Africa.[3] His mother, Cora Amelia Musk (née Robinson), was British and his father Walter Henry James Musk was a South African army sergeant,[3][9] who served as a cryptographer in a military intelligence unit in Egypt during World War II.[10] Errol attended Clapham High School, where he dated Maye Haldeman,[11] and the pair married in 1970.[12]: 44 The family lived in Pretoria, where Maye worked as a dietician and a model.[11] Their first child, Elon Reeve Musk, was born in 1971, named after Maye's grandfather J. Elon Haldeman, with the name Reeve after her maternal grandmother's maiden name.[11][3]
On 9 March 1972, Musk was elected as an independent to represent Sunnyside on the Pretoria City Council.[13][12]: 52 [14][15] In 1980,[16]: 71 he became a member of the Progressive Federal Party, the new official opposition formed in 1977, and ran as their Sunnyside nominee in the 1981 election.[12]: 52 [17]: 225, fn 119 In 1983, his resignation from the PFP over its stance towards the constitutional referendum was front page news for the ruling National Party's organ Die Burger, which portrayed the opposition as divided.[17]: 225, fn 119 [18] Musk rebelled against the PFP's call for rejecting the new constitution and cited his agreement with the New Republic Party's position that the Tricameral Parliament was a step in the right direction.[16]: 71–72
Musk studied electromechanics at the University of Pretoria, worked as an electrical and mechanical engineering consultant, and developed properties,[3] especially retail and office property development.[9]: 27 His lucrative engineering business which took on "large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base." He also owned an auto parts store, as well as "one of the biggest houses in Pretoria"[9][19] In 1979, Musk and wife Maye divorced.[11][20] 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.[21]
In her memoir, Maye characterized her marriage as abusive and alleged Errol had been violent.[22] She 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.[21] After the divorce, Musk repeatedly sued his ex-wife for custody of their children.[21]
He was briefly married to a woman named Sue.[21]
In the early 1990s, Errol, 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".[23] They had two children.[24] Jana Bezuidenhout, who later became his romantic partner, was his stepdaughter from that marriage, four years old at the time Errol became her stepfather.[24][25]
In the early 1980s, Errol built a lodge in the Timbavati Game Reserve to rent to tourists.[15]: ch. 3
In 1986, he acquired rights to the output of three Zambian emerald mines, though he did not own mines themselves. In interviews with Walter Issacson, he explained: "If you registered it, you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you".[15]: ch. 1 He later referred to his wealth during Elon's teen years in an interview with Business Insider South Africa, saying he had "so much money we couldn't even close our safe" and mentioned his emerald dealings.[26][27]Snopes confirmed that at some point he owned "a stake in an emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia".[28] He once described his emerald mine as an "under the table" operation.[29]
In 2014, Musk gave an interview about his son Elon.[32] In 2017, Musk was interviewed by Neil Strauss of Rolling Stone for a profile of Elon titled "The Architect of Tomorrow". Errol recalled that he had once shot and killed in self-defense "three out of five or six armed people" who had broken into his home. Elon described his father Errol as a "terrible human being", adding: "Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."[33][34]
In March 2018, it was reported that Errol had fathered a child with his adult step-daughter Jana Bezuidenhout.[24][35]
In July 2022, Errol gave an interview to the tabloid newspaper The Sun, announcing that he and Jana Bezuidenhout had had another child.[36][37] Musk has a total of seven children, according to People magazine in November 2022.[26] On 1 August 2022, Errol appeared on The Kyle and Jackie O Australian radio show, saying he was "not proud" of Elon.[38]
Errol was interviewed by author Walter Isaacson for his 2023 biography of Musk's son Elon, which discussed Errol Musk at length.[39] In June 2024, he said Elon had upgraded his home security system, fearing he was at risk of kidnapping.[40]
In 2024 Errol defended Elon after the latter said that the United Kingdom was heading towards a civil war.[41] Later in 2024 Errol said that Prime Minister Keir Starmer was a fascist as a result of his response to the 2024 United Kingdom riots.[42][43] He later called for Starmer's resignation.[44]
Maye Musk (née Haldeman; born April 19, 1948)[45] is a model, dietitian and author.[46][47] She has been a model for 50 years, appearing on the covers of magazines, including a Time magazine health edition, Women's Day, international editions of Vogue, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She is the mother of Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk.[48] She holds Canadian, South African, and American citizenship. She is a registered dietitian. She published her memoir, A Woman Makes a Plan in 2019.
Kimbal James Musk (born 20 September 1972) is a South African restaurateur, chef, and entrepreneur. He owns The Kitchen Restaurant Group, a collection of restaurants located in Colorado and Chicago.[49] He is the co-founder and chairman of Big Green, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has built hundreds of outdoor classrooms called Learning Gardens in schoolyards across America.[50][51][52] Musk is also the co-founder and chairman of Square Roots, an urban farming company growing food in hydroponic, indoor, climate controlled shipping containers.[53][54][55] Musk currently sits on the boards of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, both of which his brother Elon is the current CEO.[56] He was on the board of Chipotle Mexican Grill[57] from 2013 to 2019.[58] He is the brother of Tosca Musk, son of Errol and Maye Musk, and a major shareholder in Tesla.[59]
In 1995 he co-founded, with his brother, Elon Musk, the software company Zip2, which was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999.
Tosca Musk (born 20 July 1974) is a South African filmmaker. She is an executive producer and director of feature films, television programs, and web content. Her work includes K. Bromberg's Driven, Rachel van Dyken's Matchmaker's Playbook, and her web series, Tiki Bar TV.[60][61] Tosca is the younger sister of Elon Musk and Kimbal Musk, and daughter of Errol Musk and Maye Musk.[62] She co-founded the streaming service Passionflix.
A member of the wealthy South African Musk family, Musk was born in Pretoria and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at the age of 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada. Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but never enrolled in classes, and with his brother Kimbal co-founded the online city guide software company Zip2. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. That same year, Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. In 2002, Musk acquired US citizenship, and that October eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. Using $100 million of the money he made from the sale of PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company, in 2002.
In 2004, Musk was an early investor in electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (later Tesla, Inc.), providing most of the initial financing and assuming the position of the company's chairman. He later became the product architect and, in 2008, the CEO. In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces, and The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2018 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk, alleging that he had falsely announced that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. To settle the case Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine. In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, merged the company into the newly-created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In March 2023, Musk founded xAI, an artificial-intelligence company.
By early 2024, Musk became active in American politics as a vocal and financial supporter of Donald Trump, becoming Trump's second-largest individual donor in October 2024. In November 2024, Trump announced that he had chosen Musk along with Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead Trump's planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory board which will make recommendations on improving government efficiency through measures such as slashing "excess regulations" and cutting "wasteful expenditures".
Musk has at least 12 children, one of whom is deceased.[64] He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; they married in 2000.[65] In 2002, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks.[66] After his death, the couple used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to continue their family;[67] they had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006.[67] The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody of their children.[68][69]
In 2022, the elder twin officially changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson,[70] reflecting her gender identity as a trans woman and using her mother's surname because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.[70] Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as "the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists", and has said that her gender transition is primarily what sparked his drive to "destroy the woke mind virus".[71][72] In a July 2024 episode of Jordan Peterson's podcast, Musk said regarding Vivian that he had "lost [his] son, essentially" because of gender-affirming care. He commented: "You know, they call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it's called deadnaming is because your son is dead", and went on to state that the eldest twin "is dead, killed by the woke mind virus".[73] Vivian responded publicly, criticizing Musk for lying about her and the circumstances of her transition; saying that Musk was "cold", "quick to anger", "uncaring and narcissistic", whose infrequent visits commonly involved him berating her for being feminine.[74] On November 7, 2024, in response to a news article about his daughter's reaction to Trump's win, Elon Musk wrote "the woke mind virus killed my son."[75]
In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley.[76] They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland.[77][78] In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year.[79] After briefly filing for divorce in 2014,[79] Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016.[80] Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017;[81] he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.[82]
In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes said that they were dating.[83] Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.[84][85] Musk and Grimes originally gave the baby the name "X Æ A-12", which would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet,[86][87] which they then changed to "X Æ A-Xii".[88][89] They have received criticism for choosing such an impractical and difficult to pronounce name.[90]
In December 2021, Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter born via surrogacy.[91] Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed reports that the couple were "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single.[92][93] In March 2022, Grimes said of her relationship with Musk: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid."[91] Later that month, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again.[94] In September 2023 it was reported that the pair had a third child, a son.[95] In October 2023, Grimes sued Musk over parental rights and custody of their eldest son.[96][97][98]
In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had twins via IVF with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.[99] They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December. The news "raise[d] questions about workplace ethics", given that Zilis directly reported to Musk.[100] Their third child together was born in early 2024 via surrogacy.[101][64] Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year.[102] Musk denied the report.[103] Musk also had a relationship with Australian actress Natasha Bassett, who has been described as "an occasional girlfriend".[104] In October 2024, The New York Times reported Musk bought a Texas compound for his children and the mothers of his children.[105]
Lyndon Robert Rive (born 22 January 1977) is a South African-American businessman known as the co-founder of SolarCity, and its CEO until 2016. SolarCity is a provider of photovoltaic systems and related services. Rive co-founded SolarCity with his brother Peter in 2006.
Rive started his first company at age 17 before leaving his native country, South Africa.[106] He then co-founded the enterprise software company Everdream, which was ultimately acquired by Dell.[107] In 2010, Rive was named in the MIT Technology Review'sInnovators Under 35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[108]
After Tesla, Inc. acquired SolarCity in 2016, Rive announced in 2017 that he would leave the company and spend his time with his family along with further entrepreneurial activities, including working on a new startup.[109][110]
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
^"The reported resignation of Errol Musk, the PFP candidate for Sunnyside (Pretoria) election was made a front-page story. Die Burger. 4 October 1983"
^Friend, Tad (October 10, 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)
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