The 42 year age gap between Errol Musk and his former step-daughter was ‘God’s Plan’ according to the failed business magnate, but the Tesla boss called his dad is ‘evil’ beyond what anyone can imagine
Contradicting tales of emerald mines and student debt leave the elder Musk shrouded in some mystery and plenty of controversy.
Dad to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, Errol Musk was mainlined thousands of dollars in stipends as his son rose to cosmic heights. But, the Tesla boss stopped these payments cold turkey for a brief period when he discovered his father was having a child with his own stepdaughter.
As a boy, the now-billionaire Elon had been made “uncomfortable” by how “attentive” his dad was to his step-sister before the whole truth was revealed years down the line. Here is everything you need to know about how the senior Musk led a life that took him to having two children with the step-daughter he watched grow up.
Early Life
Growing up in Pretoria, a major South African city at the beginning of apartheid, Errol has controversially said separation of people by race was was “better”. Errol focused his studies on engineering in a family of adventurers. He told Forbes his parents were the first to take a single flight from South Africa to Australia and his mum was Canada’s first chiropractor.
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The beginning of a career
Excelling in higher education, Errol became a successful engineer due to his skill in electromechanical engineering. His son even credited him for some of his prowess. “I’m naturally good at engineering that’s because I inherited it from my father,” he told Rolling Stone. “What’s very difficult for others is easy for me. For a while, I thought things were so obvious that everyone must know this.”
The myth of the emerald mine remains confused. The X boss said his father had never owned an emerald mine, and his father wasn’t rich, to the point that he landed in $100k of student debt. “He didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up $100k in student debt,” Elon tweeted in December 2019.
Errol previously told Business Insider South Africa that he snapped up an emerald mine as an impulse buy. He told the story as so: “We were going to fly into Jeddah and there was a religious holiday, and they said if we come in now we have to pay $2,000, but if we wait 10 days we can come in at no charge. So we decided to head back to Lake Tanganyika from where we were, I think we were in Djibouti.”
While in Djibouti, he and his co-pilot sold their plane to some Italian nationals. “We went to this guy’s prefab [home] and he opened his safe,” Errol said. “There was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money.” The buyer also offered Errol the option to buy half of an emerald mine with that cash. “I said, ‘Oh, all right.’ So I became a half owner of the mine,” he told the outlet. “And we got emeralds for the next six years.”
Walter Isaacson revealed in Elon Musk‘s biography, that Errol Musk never owned a mine. He did import some emeralds to Johannesburg to have them cut, but this failed and he lost all earnings from the project.
In 1972, Errol was elected to the Pretoria City Council. Despite telling the The New York Times that as a member of the Progressive Party, he opposed apartheid. Errol also told the outlet that life in apartheid South Africa was “better” and “safer” than it is today. He also said his kids were “keenly aware” of apartheid and “didn’t like it.”
Relationships
Errol’s first wife, Maye, referred to her now ex-husband as “the pig” to her friends. Alleging that he was abusive the Sports Illustrated model said the problems in their marriage went beyond Erro’s cheating.
“Everybody I knew called him ‘the Pig’ because he treated me so badly in public. And I was too scared to tell anyone [about his violence],” Maye told Harper’s Bazaar in 2019. “Like every abused woman, I was embarrassed, and I knew I had made a mistake, you know? … He told me over and over that I was stupid, ugly, boring.”
Errol said: “I screwed up the marriage, I was totally responsible. It didn’t work out too well in the end.My [former] wife doesn’t speak to me, even when we’re together, she won’t speak to me, so we haven’t spoken to one other for 37 years. She won’t speak to me or engage me if we’re in the same room — which we have been often.”
Later Errol would marry Heide Bezuidenhout, whose then four year old daughter he would later have two children with.
Fathering children with step-daughter
As a child Elon “became furious” at his dad for “inappropriate behaviour” he displayed to his then-15-year-old stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout.
Walter Isaacson, Elon’s biographer, wrote that “Elon was concerned that Errol, who was then fifty-six, was becoming uncomfortably attentive to one of his stepdaughters, Jana, who was then 15.
“Elon became furious at his father because of what he perceived as his inappropriate behavior, and he had developed a deep sympathy — and tugging sense of kinship — for Errol’s stepchildren. He knew what they had to live with.”
Errol told Business Insider the claims were “balderdash” and said he would not “retaliate” to his son who he said was “having a tantrum, like a spoilt child.” He added: “He can’t have what he wants and now I am apparently an evil monster.”
Over a decade later he reconnected with his now ex-stepdaughter after she went through a break up. Errol and Jana had a son, Elliot “Rushi” Rush, in 2017 and a daughter in 2019. The birth of their daughter was not confirmed until 2022. “She wasn’t planned,” Errol said of his youngest child. “But I mean, we were living together. [Jana] stayed here for about 18 months after Rushi was born.”
Errol said Jana was getting over a breakup when she became pregnant, so he assumed the baby’s dad was Jana’s ex. “We were lonely, lost people,” Errol said. “One thing led to another — you can call it God’s plan or nature’s plan.”
Though he claimed Elon and Kimbal were upset with him for fathering a child with a woman they felt was “their sister,” Errol told The Sun: “The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce. If I could have another child I would. I can’t see any reason not to.”
Estrangement with Elon
For Elon, his relationship to his dad is beyond repair. “You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done,” Elon said. “Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done … It’s so terrible, you can’t believe it.”In my experience, there is nothing you can do,” he added. “Nothing, nothing. I wish. I’ve tried everything. I tried threats, rewards, intellectual arguments, emotional arguments, everything to try to change my father for the better, and he… no way, it just got worse.”
Isaacson said Elon Musk who had been giving his father stipends of between $2,000 to $5,000 a month since 2010 only temporarily stopped sending the funds when he learned his father had a child with his former stepdaughter. His dad said although he was “grateful” for these funds, he only actually needed the help once in 2022.