Elon Musk’s Father Says He Was Friends With ‘Black Servants’ Growing Up

Elon’s portrayal of his childhood in apartheid-era South Africa contrasts with his father's comments and others' accounts of their experiences.

In response to an in-depth article exposing Elon Musk’s shift from once being considered a political moderate to seemingly promoting white supremacist conspiracy theories, his father, Errol Musk, defended him in an emailed statement to The Washington Post, claiming he had Black friends growing up.

The elder Musk, himself, has long told a story that his unregistered emerald mining enterprise in Zambia helped to finance his son’s early enterprises, including his move to America, which Elon has either denied or downplayed.

Accounts from Elon Musk’s father and others about his upbringing in apartheid-era South Africa contradict Musk’s portrayal of his childhood as “tough.”

According to Errol, Musk was not involved in politics back then and also had “Black servants who were his friends” in addition to some Black friends that he had made at school.

“They were not into political nonsense, and we lived in a very well-run, law-abiding country with virtually no crime at all. Actually no crime. We had several Black servants who were their friends,” Errol wrote in an email to the Post in reference to Elon and his younger brother.

The outlet also spoke to Rudolph Pienaar, a former classmate of Elon Musk at Pretoria Boys High School in South Africa, who, like Musk, now works in the United States. “We grew up in a bubble of entitlement,” Pienaar said. “I am not sure if Elon can conceive of systematic discrimination and struggle because that’s not his experience. His life now in some ways is how it was under apartheid — rich and entitled with the entire society built to sustain him and his ilk.”

Despite having Black “friends” growing up, Tesla employees have complained of not feeling supported in the workplace.

Nathan Murthy, a Black and Filipino Tesla engineer who was fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in one of Tesla’s factories, told the Post that Musk’s email admonishing employees to accept sincere apologies from jerks in service of being thick-skinned rubbed him the wrong way.

“It felt really dismissive when there was very obvious racial tension,” Murthy told the Washington Post. “Musk was essentially saying, ‘Shut up and go back to work.’ I’ve been trying to raise the alarm on Elon for years.”