Errol Musk

Errol Graham Musk (born 25 May 1946) is a South African businessman and politician who is the patriarch of the Musk family.

Musk attended Clapham High School in Queenswood, where he began a relationship with Maye Haldeman, Musk served in the Burgermag for 11 years, where he later claimed to have reached the rank of officer before retiring in 1975.

Career On 9 March 1972, Musk was elected as an independent to represent Sunnyside on Pretoria City Council. In 1980 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. 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. 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. His ex-wife Maye's book recalls that at the time of their divorce in 1979, he owned two homes, a yacht, a plane, five luxury cars, and a truck.

In the early 1980s, Errol built a lodge in the Timbavati Game Reserve to rent to tourists. Snopes confirmed that at some point he owned "a stake in an emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia." He once described his emerald mine as an "under the table" operation.

According to the 2015 biography of Elon Musk, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, in 1995 Errol Musk gave US$28,000 to Elon and Kimbal as they were starting up the software company Zip2. Elon has denied receiving the money from his father.

In a January 2025 video interview, Musk stated that governance in South Africa has deteriorated.

In January 2025, Musk endorsed a meme coin called "Musk It" and revealed that he planned to raise $200 million for the Musk Institute via this project.

In February 2025, Musk arranged a phone call between his son Elon and Cyril Ramaphosa, during which the two discussed the impact of Donald Trump's policies on South Africa. In April 2025, Errol praised Vladimir Putin in an interview with BBC News Russian. He said "it would be foolish not to admire Putin." He also implied Russia was not responsible for the war in Ukraine, and claimed his entire family supported Putin.

In June 2025, Musk visited the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, India, with his daughter Alexandra, calling it "one of the best things I’ve ever done." He was also named Global Advisor to the Indian company Servotech Power Systems and took part in green energy initiatives during his visit. Also in June 2025, Musk participated as a speaker at the Forum of the Future 2050 in Moscow, a conference organised by the Russian television channel Tsargrad and its chairman Konstantin Malofeev; the guests also included the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, the economist Jeffrey Sachs and the radio host Alex Jones.

In November 2025, during an interview on CNN with Donie O'Sullivan in a documentary about a supposed white genocide in South Africa, Musk expressed his opinion that the United States is "doomed" because it will have a majority non-white population within the next 20 years, proclaiming "You want to go back to the jungle?". Musk also denied that blacks were oppressed during the apartheid era in South Africa and credited whites with "feeding" the black population and giving them work.

Family life In 1979, Musk and his wife Maye divorced. In her memoir, Maye characterised her marriage as abusive and alleged Errol had been violent. She recounts a time during their divorce when she sought refuge at a neighbour's home after Errol showed up with a knife looking for her. He had two daughters with Bezuidenhout.

In March 2018, it was reported that Musk had fathered a child with his adult step-daughter, Heide's daughter Jana Bezuidenhout. In July 2022, he 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, according to People magazine in November 2022.

In 2022, Musk stated he was "not proud" of Elon. In 2024, he defended Elon after the latter said that the United Kingdom was heading towards a civil war. In January 2025, he defended Elon's remarks but also urged people to ignore them.

In September 2025, The New York Times published an article alleging that "a significant factor in Elon Musk's rupture with his father stems from accusations against Errol Musk of child sexual abuse." The earliest accusation of abuse came in 1993, when Musk's stepdaughter told relatives that he had touched her inappropriately.