by CHRIS McGREAL
Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in a wealthy family under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Musk’s family history reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi politics. We speak with Chris McGreal, reporter for The Guardian, to understand how Musk’s upbringing shaped his worldview, as well as that of his South African-raised colleague Peter Thiel, a right-wing billionaire who co-founded PayPal alongside Musk. “Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life,” said McGreal. “If you were a white South African in that period and you had any money at all, you lived with servants at your beck and call.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show with Part 2 of my recent interview with the reporter Chris McGreal, who was the Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian during the last years of apartheid through 2002. He’s been closely following the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Some of McGreal’s pieces include “What does Elon Musk believe?” and “How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa.” I began by asking Chris McGreal to discuss Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman.
CHRIS McGREAL: We see Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. He immigrates to South Africa in 1950. And that’s really when apartheid has just started to kick in. The 1950s are when the most — the first laws — South Africa had had discriminatory laws before, but you see the specific apartheid laws, which are much more aggressive, and in many ways reminiscent of the Nazi Nuremberg laws against Jews in the 1930s. They have very similar echoes in stripping Black people from the right to work in certain places, their movements, controlling them, confining them to areas. You already had a situation which has now, you know, come to the fore because of recent events with Trump, but —
AMY GOODMAN: You mean with Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute?
CHRIS McGREAL: Yes, but also with the sanctions over land, is that the 1913 Land Act had already deprived most Black people of land in South Africa anyway. At that point, the 7%, or 10%, as it was, of the population that was white owned more than 85% of the land under the Land Act of 1913. So, the apartheid laws kick in in the 1950s.
Musk was born — Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, and at that point the prime minister was a guy called John Vorster. And John Vorster’s background is very telling, really, because Vorster, in the 1930s, had been a member of a neo-Nazi militia called the OB, which was openly sympathetic and linked to the Nazis in Germany. It was responsible for all kinds of attacks, but including burning Jews out of their businesses in Johannesburg.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re talking about what years?
CHRIS McGREAL: In the 1930s, so the late 1930s. And then South Africa goes to war as an ally of Britain against Hitler. The OB and the groups that support them, like Vorster, people like Vorster, they actively oppose that. They actually are in touch with — OB is in touch with German military intelligence, and they plan to assassinate the prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, and overthrow the government and have it support Hitler. That plan fails, because the Germans are unable to provide the necessary weapons and back out.
But in 1942, John Vorster, later prime minister, stands up and gives a speech, and he talks about the system that they — their kind of ideological belief system, which was Christian nationalism. And he says Christian nationalism in South Africa is the same as Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy. It’s all anti-democratic. It’s all the same thing. By 1971, when Elon Musk is born, that man is the prime minister of South Africa. And Christian nationalism is the basis of not only the political philosophy, but the entire education system that Elon Musk is brought up into.
AMY GOODMAN: So, take us from Elon Musk’s grandfather moving to South Africa in the ’50s to his father, how they gained their wealth.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Musk — Elon Musk’s grandfather moves there in 1950s. He’s not particularly prosperous. He arrives without a lot of money. But it’s Elon Musk’s father, Errol, who makes the real money, principally through investments in emerald mines in Zambia. And, you know, mining conditions in southern Africa in that period were really pretty dire in the 1960s and ’70s, very high death rate, very poor conditions. But the owners got very rich.
And Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life. If you were a white South African in that period and you had any money at all, you lived with servants at your beck and call. You lived in sprawling housing. And what you see with Errol Musk is that when we get a glimpse into just how much money he had, when he and Elon’s mother get divorced, she says at the time that, well, he owns a yacht, he owns a jet, he owns several houses. So there was considerable wealth there.
AMY GOODMAN: Was the grandfather of Elon Musk on the record in his support for Vorster?
CHRIS McGREAL: Well, he was certainly on the record in his support for apartheid, very vividly so, yes. And he said that that’s why he had moved to South Africa from Canada in 1940, was in support of it. Now, the grandfather himself is killed a few years later in a plane crash, but it’s not known what Elon Musk’s grandmother’s personal views of Vorster particularly were, but they were both avid supporters of the apartheid system, and the grandmother lived for a number of years afterwards.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’ve been talking about Elon Musk’s maternal grandparents and how they moved to South Africa, but talk about their roots in Canada.
CHRIS McGREAL: Originally, the grandparents have no connection to South Africa. They’re born and grew up in Canada. And in the 1930s, the grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, he’s head of the Canadian branch of a U.S. movement called Technocracy Incorporated. And Technocracy Incorporated is essentially a movement to overthrow democratic governments in the United States and have technocrats, but big businessmen, in many ways, come in and run the country. That’s partly a reaction to FDR’s election and New Deal and massive reforms that he’s introduced in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: So, from Canada, they would help to launch a coup against FDR?
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