Elon Musk's childhood in apartheid South Africa shaped his life and thoughts :::::: Musk, who was on school’s chess team in 1985, was viciously bullied and thrown down the stairs,

South Africa was rocked by uprisings as apartheid entered its dying years. In 1984, black townships across the country revolted. 

The billionaire and now Trump adviser grew up amid the collapse of white rule, attending an all-white school and then a more liberal one -writes Rachel Savage for 'The Guardian'. 

Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa’s capital, close to his father’s large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring.

Musk, who was born in Pretoria in 1971, railed on his social media platform X last month against the “openly racist laws” of the country of his birth and responded “yes” to the statement: 

“White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country.”

After the posts by the man now at the helm of Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a special group Trump has created, the US president signed an executive order accusing South Africa’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners, citing a law allowing land to be expropriated in certain circumstances. 

The order cut aid to South Africa, which receives 17% of its HIV/Aids budget from the US, and offered asylum to Afrikaners.

It was not clear the extent to which Musk, who left South Africa in 1989 for his mother’s country, Canada, and then went to the US, had a direct hand in encouraging Trump to issue the order.

Trump has taken an interest in the alleged persecution of white South Africans since his first presidency, when an Afrikaner rights group travelled to the US to claim, falsely, that white farmers were being murdered for their land with the complicity of the government. 

Trump saw one of the group’s leaders interviewed on Fox News and tweeted his support.

Trump has also been influenced by other interests, including US groups critical of South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza, which he referred to in his executive order.

But with Musk now among Trump’s closest advisers, it is unlikely he has not made his views known to the president, given they are also tied up with his business interests in South Africa.

Musk has claimed that land reform laws, in a country where the white minority, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, still own more than 70% of agricultural land, are racist and amount to theft. 

He has endorsed claims that the killings of white farmers amount to genocide; research suggests the crimes are financially motivated.

Musk’s attacks have ratcheted up at a time when he is in a dispute with the South African government about affirmative action laws, as he tries to sell his Starlink satellite network in the country. 

The world’s richest man objects to a law requiring that foreign investors in the telecoms sector provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses.

snap: by Nirmal Kumar Deb 

Trump’s executive order will add to the pressure on South Africa’s government to exempt Musk from the Black empowerment laws.

To what extent Musk’s years growing up under the collapsing apartheid regime influenced his positions today, from making what looked like a Nazi salute – a characterisation he rejects – at Trump’s inauguration celebrations last month to his embrace of far-right political parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, remains an open debate.

'The Guardian' link

White, English-speaking South Africans such as Musk’s family benefited from apartheid’s racial hierarchy but lived mostly separate lives from the ruling Afrikaners.

Musk spent the first two years of South Africa’s five high school years at the all-white Bryanston high school in Johannesburg’s leafy northern suburbs. Founded in 1968, it is a mixed-sex, English-language, fee-paying state school, made up of rectangular mid-century buildings.

Like South Africa then and now, Bryanston high was sports mad. 

“It was a little bit like when you think of American society,” said Lesley Burns, who finished at the school in 1984, Musk’s first year. “There were all the jocks and the popular guys in the football team.”

Musk, who was on the school’s chess team in 1985, was viciously bullied. The hounding culminated with him being thrown down a set of stairs, beaten so badly that he was hospitalised. The school declined an interview.

Musk extreme left sitting 

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