It was not a good idea.. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done," Elon said. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, grew up in South Africa and made his way via Canada to the U.S. as a transfer student before attending the Wharton School and becoming the billionaire tech founder he is today. Worked on my Moms cousins farm in Saskatchewan & a lumber mill in Vancouver. The claim attracted a response from the billionaire, who said that the claim isn't true. He began his career as an electromechanical engineer. "I said, 'Oh, all right'. They never made it to their destination. I arrived by myself in Canada in 89 with ~CA$2500 Paid my own way through college, ending with ~$100k student debt Started 1st company with no funding & just one computer I built Theres no evidence whatsoever of an emerald mine, 2/2My father & his extended family have been dependent on financial support from my brother & me for over 20 years. Copyright 2023 Market Realist. Smart Policies are as low as $30 a month, No Medical Exam Required Curiously, Errol has said nothing more about the controversial emerald mine story in the years since, even in recent interviews like his discussion with Forbes last year. ", In 2018, he explained that he was helping Jana get over a breakup at the time of Rushi's conception, but he initially assumed the baby's father was Jana's ex. Hull, Dana, and Patrick May. Elon, by his father's recollection then probably 16 years old, and his brother Kimbal, decided to sell emeralds to Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York . It spoke of the divorce of Elon's parents, Errol and Maye Musk, and also contained a quick mention of an emerald mine. In a 2017 email to employees which the company later released in response to one of the lawsuits, Elon warned against being a huge jerk to members of a historically less represented group. He also wrote, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.. We sent these messages on Nov. 16, but did not receive responses before publishing this story on the following day. In addition, they offered Errol a chance to buy partial ownership of a Zambian emerald mine. This material may not be reproduced without permission. The way Errol tells it, that all started with an inconvenient religious holiday. He said that they stopped in Djibouti to avoid pricey airport fees, and there happened to meet some Italian merchants who offered to buy the plane from him then and there. Ashlee Vance interviewed hundreds of people. Still, it wasarchived by the Internet Archive. Note: The reference to Zip2 concerned Elon's "first enterprise" in 1995. There, the two South Africans ran into a group of Italians who, as it happened, were in the market for an airplane. I'm going to wait until he comes to his senses. For the state of Texas, The Onion printed, "Elon Musk: Apartheid.". He continued: He grabbed some weapons, as you could see on the cameras there were some intruders that were coming over the walls, and they were also armed. Bloomberg.com, 22 May 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-05-22/elon-musk-speaks-frankly-on-coronavirus-spacex-and-rage-tweets. 2021, https://www.theonion.com/the-richest-person-in-every-state-and-how-they-made-the-1846312073. D'Innocenzio, Anne. Went to Queens Univ with scholarship & debt, then same to UPenn/Wharton & Stanford., In a follow-up tweet, Elon said his father didnt own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt.. But that's more or less where the good fortune ended. In the interview, Musk's father explained that he bought his share of the emerald mine after selling a plane to a group of Italians. In the biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, author Ashlee Vance wrote that Errol invested $28,000 in Elon and Kimbal's then-fledgling company, Zip2. Standing with the cash in his hand, Errol was made another offer he couldnt refuse: Would he like to buy half an emerald mine for half of his new riches? And we spent three weeks making our rent-controlled apartment livable in Toronto, Maye tweeted. And, on at least one occasion, his now famous son also took his hand at dealing in the gems, with peculiar results. . Thereafter you will be billed R75 per month. Theyd seen I was sleeping in one morning, and they said, Oh lets just try, lets go.. He will plan evil. We also reached out to media relations personnel at SpaceX, where he is the founder and CEO, as well as Tesla and Twitter. Here's a summary of our findings: We located reporting from as far back as 2009 and 2014 that said when Elon Musk ("Elon" hereafter) was a child in South Africa in the 1980s, his father ("Errol" hereafter) at some point owned "a stake in an emerald mine" near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia, not South Africa. All Rights Reserved. On holidays, Errol and his kids would travel, he said: to Europe, Hong Kong, throughout the United States. I can't see any reason not to. The child, a boy named Elliot Rush, is now 5 years old. Errol talked about Elons fascination with computers when they first came out in the mid-80s, during an interview on radio station 702 in Johannesburg, as reported by Forbes. [21] As of 2022, Musk and Jana Bezuidenhout were no longer living together. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble? Note: Some of the tweets that promoted the rumor said that Elon did not found Tesla, which was true. Theyre the same, except for the fact that he is a billionaire, started multiple successful companies and doesnt live in his mothers basement. The Onion, a satirical publication, shared. In an interview with Rolling Stone, during which he reportedly cried, Elon called his father "a terrible human being" and "evil. Ive tried everything. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done., He was such a terrible human being. This is not true," Elon told Rolling Stone in 2017. His mother Maye responded on Twitter in December 2019 in defense of Elon. The Twitter account no longer exists. South Africa Blue Sky Publications (Pty) Ltd T/A TheSouthAfrican Number: 2005/028472/07. This article is actually accurate: https://t.co/eVpCX9V1NB. We reached out to AskMen.com to ask if the fact that some of the pages were gone was a glitch, or if it was a purposeful partial removal. "We were very wealthy. You can cancel anytime and if you cancel within 14 days you won't be billed. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley. But the emerald mine story keeps coming back. He has also dismissed rumors that his father co-owned a Zambian emerald mine, writing on Twitter in 2019: He didnt own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. He added that Elon left the country as "a clear indication of his willingness to not support the political suppression in the country. Musk's father said that Tiffanys set the $800 emerald in a ring and offered it for $24,000, which he said was an object lesson in retail markup for the family. We did not receive a response from Forbes PR. Im not sure if replying to a satire site and amplifying their articles reach is necessarily the best idea, but Musk felt that this was a hill worth dying on. Whats very difficult for others is easy for me. "I Talked to Elon Musk about Journalism and the Blood Emeralds Story." "They didn't like it.". In the meantime, Musk continues to make waves on multiple technological fronts, all while raising concerns about workers' rights and income inequality. "Exploring the Otherworldly Ambitions of Elon Musk." First, we have republished past statements from both Errol and Elon. We contacted Elon publicly on Twitter. One of their homes was in Waterkloof, a leafy suburb of Pretoria that was popular with foreign diplomats. At 17, Musk decided to leave home, heading first to Canada and then the U.S. for university. He also claimed, "My father & his extended family have been dependent on financial support from my brother & me for over 20 years.". Some of his most vocal detractors have promoted the idea that Musk, like Trump, began his career backed by the deep pockets of dear old dad. "They just walked into Tiffany's and said, 'Do you want to buy some emeralds?' After his divorce from Elons mother, Errol went on to wed HeideBezuidenhout, a young widow who already had two children, including 4-year-old Jana Bezuidenhout. Then he'd sue me and say that I was unfit to parent.". This story will be updated if any further details come to light. For a while, I thought things were so obvious that everyone must know this., However, Elon has disputed claims that he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. Errol also added that his children were keenly aware of the country's government-sanctioned racial segregation. The Daily Mail has reported that Errol was a multimillionaire before the age of 30. He just had a rich dad and a got lucky. Musk responded about the time when the photo was clicked. Given Elon Musks interest in exploration and adventure, its no surprise he descends from intrepid stock, and its Errols side of the family that is seemingly responsible for his innovative, envelope-pushing genes. His tweet is now viral with over 9.1 million views. The tweet was shared as a screenshot on Imgur.com, which showed the image had been viewed more than 300,000 times. Musk's revelation about his father's financial situation in the '90s comes after a Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, claimed on Twitter that 'self-made billionaires' are a myth and Musk came from a family that owned an emerald mine in Apartheid South Africa. Copyright Blue Sky Publications Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Unlike his son, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Errol has mostly flown under the radar, though the father of seven has had an increasingly public profile over the last few years, largely due to his complicated family relationships. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. It was also shared on Reddit.com. We went to this guys prefab, and he opened his safe, and there [were] just stacks of money, and he paid me out 80,000, It was a huge amount of money, he said. The story made no further mention of the mine. On Aug. 17, 2009, The New Yorker printed one of the earliest known searchable records of an emerald mine being tied to the Musk name. Errol and a co-pilot were flying a plane from South Africa to England to sell the aircraft but when they couldn't make a scheduled stop in Saudi Arabia, he pivoted his plan and changed his life. Errol told Business Insider South Africa that he co-owned an emerald mine in Zambia. ", Elon has said one of the reasons he is so skilled at engineering is because of his father. He attended Queens University in Canada. Elon may have been 6 or 7 years old at the time and begged his dad to get him a ticket to a very early computer conference in South Africa. Elon was said to be particularly furious that his father had impregnated his stepsister. While His Dad Was Sleeping." ", For his part, Errol told the Daily Mail that Elon "needs to grow up" and "get over himself," adding, "I'm not going to hit back. After the divorce, Elon lived with his father in Pretoria, where he attended Pretoria Boys High. 1/2This article is false. Errol told Business Insider South Africa that he once owned half of an emerald mine in Zambia, which he claimed to have purchased on a whim. Kimbal is a millionaire who owns restaurant chains and spearheads a nonprofit education program, The Kitchen Community, which grows vegetables in the U.S. Tosca is a film producer and director. Instead, we will concentrate on the two Business Insider South Africa articles mentioned by Arnold that appeared to provide the roots of the "apartheid emerald mine" rumor. "He also claims he was getting emeralds from other sources, with only 60-70% coming from this venture." Note: Less than two weeks after Arnold's piece was published in 2021, the satirical website The Onion printed a story with the headline, "The Richest Person In Every State And How They Made Their Money." The buyer also offered Errol the option to buy half of an emerald mine with that cash. We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe," Errol said, explaining that one person would hold the money down while a second would slam the safe door shut. The Buffalo News via San Jose Mercury News via Newspapers.com, 20 Apr. And I was too scared to tell anyone [about his violence]," Maye told Harper's Bazaar in 2019. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com, Image Via PHILIP PACHECO/AFP via Getty Images. In addition to Elon, Errol is dad to son Kimbal Musk and daughters Tosca, Alexandra and Asha Rose Musk. It didn't work out too well in the end," he said. Kaizer Chiefs to sign more Stellenbosch players? Born in 1971, Musk grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. 2021, https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Elon-Musks-family-got-their-wealth-from-apartheid-emerald-mining. ", His post ended with this: "Finally, it is necessary to acknowledge the wrong and oppressive nature of apartheid and we do need to recognise the pain and suffering it caused for many South Africans, but I do not feel it is fair to associate any of that with what Elon has achieved through hard work since he left South African shores as a teenager of 17.". "Elon Musk's family owns an emerald mine" was corrected to "Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine." A post on Reddit mentioned a theory that said Elon "convinced these publications to remove the articles," but there's no evidence to support that. TheSouthAfrican.com is all about South Africa and the stories that affect South Africans, wherever they are in the world. All rights reserved. Errol and Heide eventually divorced after an 18-year marriage. Where is this B.S. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Forbes, 28 July 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/. Errol Musk was born in 1946 in Pretoria to Walter Henry James Musk and Cora Amelia Robinson. ", Inoneof the tweets from Elon in which he refuted the emerald mine rumor, he linked to an article that had been published on March 9, 2021. To me, he sure is trying to make the world better right now, and that's the best thing he could do with his father's money. More answers and details are available in Arnold's article. [9], Errol Musk's claims that he invested in Elon Musk's software company Zip2 have been rejected by Elon Musk. Musk's father, Errol, an engineer, married Maye when she was 22, and Musk was born shortly . Errol Musk (born 1946) is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer who was once a co-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.
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