- Elon Musk’s parents are Errol Musk, an engineer, and Maye Musk, a model and dietitian.
- Elon and Errol Musk appear to have a strained relationship, based on press comments.
- Errol Musk made news as the father of children with his former daughter-in-law, Jana Bezuidenhout.
Elon Musk seems to constantly be in the news – but his parents have also made headlines. Elon Musk’s parents are Maye Musk and Errol Musk.
Maye Musk is a registered dietitian and model who has appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Last year, at the age of 74, she graced the cover of Sport Illustrated’s swimsuit edition.
Maye and Musk’s father, an engineer named Errol Musk, was married for almost a decade before divorcing. Maye said in her book that she had wanted to end the marriage earlier, but the Divorce Act, which legalized the breakdown of a marriage in South Africa, was not enacted until 1979. The couple divorced the same year the law was passed.
After their parents divorced, 9-year-old Musk and his younger brother Kimbal decided to live with their father.
It was only after this decision that Elon Musk’s notoriously troubled relationship with his father began to emerge. “It was not a good idea,” Musk said of the decision in an interview with Rolling Stone.
Errol Musk made headlines in 2018 when it was revealed he had a child with his 30-year-old former stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout, whom he has known since the age of four.
Bezuidenhout is 42 years younger than Errol and is the daughter of his ex-wife Heide. Errol and Heide have been married for 18 years and have two daughters together. In 2022, the elder Musk revealed that he had a second child with Bezuidenhout.
Errol Musk and Elon Musk. GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP) (Photo by GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP via Getty Images/Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
The Tesla CEO told Rolling Stone in 2017 that his father was “a terrible human being.”
“You have no idea how serious this is,” Musk said. “Almost every crime you can think of, he’s committed.”
Last year, Errol answered the question of whether he was proud of his son during an appearance on Australian radio show “The Kyle and Jackie O Show.”
“No,” he replied. “Well, you know, we’re a family that’s been doing a lot of things for a long time. It’s not like we suddenly started doing something.”
He later said he had misheard the question.
In a 2018 interview with Business Insider, Errol Musk spoke about the Musk family’s wealth.
“We were very rich,” Errol said. “Sometimes we had so much money we couldn’t even close our safe.”
Part of the wealth came from a half share in a Zambian emerald mine owned by Errol.
One day in New York, Elon and his brother Kimbal sold two emeralds from the mine while Errol slept, Errol said.
“They just walked into Tiffany’s and said, ‘Do you want to buy emeralds?'” Errol said. “And they sold two emeralds, one was $800 and I think the other was $1,200.”
Elon would have been around 16 at the time, according to Errol.
A few days later, the family returned to the store and discovered that Tiffany’s was selling the $800 emerald, now set in a ring, for $24,000. This was a markup 30 times the price Elon received for the gemstone, and Errol has since used the story as an object lesson in how retail works.
Business Insider reached out to Elon Musk to confirm his father’s story, but he did not respond. But since then, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, has walked back that statement, repeatedly denying that his father ever owned an emerald mine.
“He didn’t own an emerald mine and I went to college, ending up with about $100,000 in student debt,” Musk tweeted in 2019 in response to an X user.
Elon Musk later claimed to have financially supported his father.
“Errol ran out of money in the 90s,” Musk tweeted in 2022. “My brother and I financially supported him and his extended family in South Africa.”
Errol Musk, 77, has not yet ruled out having more children.
Much like his son Elon Musk – who has 10 known living children – Errol Musk told Business Insider that he thinks people should have more children and that he would consider having more.
Musk’s father also doesn’t drive a Tesla – and has no plans to do so anytime soon.
In January 2022, Errol Musk turned down his son’s offer to give him a Tesla and ship it to his home in South Africa, he told Insider.
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