Errol Musk: The Brilliant, ‘Evil’ Father of Elon Musk - YouTube

We often see Elon Musk and his siblings pictured with their mum, Maye Musk.

Yet their relationship with their  father is much more complicated.

Errol Musk is a brilliant engineer who undoubtedly  passed on his genes to his famous son.

He has also been described by Elon as “evil”.

This is the story of how he helped  shape the richest man in the world.

Errol was born in Pretoria, South Africa  to an army sergeant father and a British  

mother whose family is famed for their intellect.

Errol and Maye grew up in the same neighborhood. He fell for her supermodel looks.

She became a well-known  fashion model and a dietician.

The two dated on and off at university.

According to Maye, Errol relentlessly pursued  her hand in marriage, telling Elon’s biographer  

Ashlee Vance, “He just never stopped proposing.”

Reminiscent of Elon’s pursuit  of his first wife Justine while  

they were at university together in Canada.

Justine described to biographer Vance  how Elon would call her insistently, 

saying, “You always knew it was Elon because  the phone would never stop ringing. The man  

does not take no for an answer. You can’t blow  him off. I do think of him as the Terminator. He  

locks his gaze on to something and says, ‘It  shall be mine.’ Bit by bit, he won me over.”

Nine months after Errol and Maye tied  the knot, Elon came into the world.

They knew their son was special from  a very young age as Errol told South

African radio station 702’s the  Money Show with Bruce Whitfield.

He’s always been a very deep thinker. When he  was very small, for example, he would ask me:  

“Where is the whole world?”. Good question. It’s a  very good question, yah. I’m talking about when he  

was three or four. And these sort of questions  made me realize he’s a little different.

The Musk family lived comfortably in Pretoria  thanks to Errol’s successful engineering business

and his work as a real-estate developer.

According to Elon, his father  has an extremely high IQ

and is a talented electrical  and mechanical engineer.

Elon benefited immensely from his father’s skill.

Errol used to take him and his brother  Kimbal to his engineering job sites

where they learned how to lay bricks, install  plumbing, and put in electrical wiring.

It was also Errol who introduced  Elon to the world of computers.

When Elon was 11, he insisted that his dad take 

him to learn how to use the new  computers that had just come out.

He was far too young to attend a course hosted at

the University of the Witwatersrand  in Johannesburg  

but his dad managed to book him a spot through his engineering connections.

Errol recounted what happened  when Elon went to that lecture.

Anyway, he went, and I left him there, took Kimbal  and I went off to get a hamburger. And came back. 

It was a three-hour-long thing at Wits. And we  came back and everyone came out and no Elon.  

And we waited and waited. And finally, went  into the chilly halls of Wits and found this  

sort of sloping theatre, lecture hall, rather.  And there was Elon with his jacket and tie off  

and his sleeves rolled up and his long grey  flannels, four feet high, talking to all these  

blokes from England. And when I walked up to  them, the one who, some professor - he didn’t even  

bother to sort of introduce himself - he  just said to me: ‘This boy has to have one  

of these computers.’ Anyway, we got him one of the  computers, and I got it at a discount, thank God.

With that computer, Elon  taught himself how to program.

And he was brilliant at it.

He scored an A+ on an aptitude test for  programming and operating a computer when  

he briefly attended the University of Pretoria.

According to Maye, he had to be re-tested because  the university had never seen such a high score.

Although from the outside it may have  appeared Elon had a happy childhood,  

he would say that it felt like  “misery” thanks in large part to Errol.

Maye and Errol divorced in  1979 when Elon was eight.

She left what she described  as an abusive relationship.

Maye struggled as a single mom. She said  she’d cry when one of the kids spilled milk 

because she couldn’t buy more milk that day.

She worked several jobs to  support her three children,  

bought secondhand clothes, and cooked cheap  and nutritious meals for them like bean stews.

After a couple of years, Elon felt  sorry that his father was living alone  

and decided to move in with him  in a suburb of Johannesburg.

It was a decision he would come to regret.

Elon told Rolling Stone: “He  was such a terrible human being.  

You have no idea. My dad will have a carefully  thought-out plan of evil. He will plan evil.”

“Almost every crime you can possibly think of,  

he has done. Almost every evil thing you  could possibly think of, he has done.”

Elon never specified what  his father had allegedly done  

but says he wasn’t physically violent toward him.

This is what we do know about Errol.

He once said he shot and killed  three people who broke into his home,  

and was later cleared of all charges  on the grounds of self-defense.

He also had a child with his stepdaughter,  

Jana Bezuidenhout, from another marriage.

He said his stepdaughter turned to him for  comfort after a breakup with her boyfriend,  

and the child was conceived  “in the heat of the moment”.

Errol has spoken out against Elon’s portrayal  of him, telling the UK’s Daily Mail:  

“‘Elon needs to grow up. He needs to get over  himself. I’m not going to hit back. I’m going  

to wait until he comes to his senses. He’s  having a tantrum, like a spoilt child.”

By the time Elon came to live  with him after the divorce,  

Errol claimed he was making a  lot of money in emerald mining.

Business Insider reported that Errol  owned half of an emerald mine in Zambia.

And in another Business Insider article,  

Errol said: 'We had so much money  we couldn't even close our safe'.

But according to Elon, his father  didn’t own an emerald mine.

Elon tweeted that he had to work his way through  college, ending up with $100,000 in student debt,  

and couldn’t afford a second  computer at his first company, Zip2.

He said when he emigrated from South Africa to  North America, he only had $2,000 in his pocket.

Elon’s goal was always to  end up in the United States,  

the home of all the exciting  developments in technology.

To get to the States, he first went  to Canada, his mother’s birthplace.

Elon was just 17 years old when he arrived  in Canada, where he stayed with a cousin,  

working on a farm in Saskatchewan. He later made his way here to Toronto,  

and also obtained passports for his mother,  brother, and sister to join him. They lived  

for a time at 4000 Yonge St. in this rent-controlled apartment. According to Maye, Elon slept on the couch.

His father did not wish him well.

In fact, Errol didn’t think his  son would make much of himself.

Elon said his father told  him he’d be back in South

Africa in three months and that he was an idiot.

That “idiot” went on to found and run  

two of the most innovative and successful  companies in the world, Tesla and SpaceX.

Some have suggested that Musk’s image as the  savior of humanity, by accelerating the world’s  

transition to sustainable energy, and by trying to  colonize Mars, might stem from his childhood pain.

Rolling Stone wrote: Somewhere in this trauma  bond is the key to Musk’s worldview – creation  

against destruction, of being useful versus  harmful, of defending the world against evil.

Does his father now believe his son will succeed  and go where no man or woman has gone before?

Is Elon going to get to Mars? He is. I don’t  think there’s any doubt in it whatsoever.

Yet it’s unlikely Elon would take  his father along for the ride.

Their relationship remains strained. Elon Musk is now the richest person  

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up with my custom link in the description. Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom.