When The New Yorker asked the Pentagon in 2023 about Elon Musk's role in the Ukraine war, the US Department of Defense said, "we will only speak if [Musk] wants us to," and recommended the journalist Ronan Farrow to contact the businessman directly.
Errol Musk, however, doesn't seem to ask Elon for permission to speak. Perhaps because he is his father. Also, because he gives the impression that he has never asked anyone for permission for anything. Exactly like his son. That's why he might be the best person to understand Elon, who is not only the richest man in the world but also one of the most powerful, adored, admired, and feared, and who has been part of the US government.
If Elon Musk's life seems amazing, it's because it follows Errol's footsteps, a self-made fortune in South Africa, who bought his first Rolls-Royce at 27, a good friend of P.W. Botha, the last president of the country who refused to dismantle the racist system known as "apartheid," married and divorced four times with three women, boyfriend of his stepdaughter - 41 years younger than him - with whom he has two children, and a man capable of exchanging his private plane for an emerald mine on the lawless border between Tanzania and Zambia in the 1980s without any paper or contract.
At 79, Errol is an excellent conversationalist, who accepts any question with a tone of voice and inflections reminiscent of his son's, and gives affably incendiary opinions on racial relations, decolonization, apartheid, democracy, and immigration. Besides, of course, on who Elon Musk is and his relationship with Donald Trump.
And all with a relaxed air that begins when the interview starts with a "hello," a memory of his many trips to Spain, the last of which was when he sailed from South Africa to the Mediterranean with one of his daughters, who had such a great time on the Costa del Sol that she said, "Dad, why don't you continue sailing and I stay in Marbella?"
Question. You have been a successful entrepreneur all your life, taking enormous risks and being in politics. As an amateur psychiatrist, one could say that Elon is copying you, but on a much larger scale. You even launched the business careers of Elon and Kimbal [his second son, who is also an entrepreneur and on the board of Tesla], by financing their first company, Zip2, in 1995.
Answer. I don't know... my experience in politics and Elon's have been very different.
Q. Why?
A. Elon was amazed when he entered politics, by pure chance, and saw how different it is from business. He is a leader in the private sector and is used to working in open offices with other people. When he goes to work, everyone, from the doorman to the executives, says, "Hello, Elon!" But when you are at the top of the political hierarchy, it's different. They pull out the chair from the desk for you to sit, and then move it to make you more comfortable. Before you say "I want a coffee," there's a guy with a coffee in front of you. I'm being melodramatic, but it's a bit like that.
Q. Wasn't Elon psychologically prepared?
A. Imagine Miss Spain. She is chosen, and suddenly everyone bows to her. She's a star. A team of people works for her, people recognize her on the street. But when her reign as Miss ends, she hands over the crown to her successor. And she's nobody again. I know from experience that those poor girls spend the rest of their lives trying to go back to that year when they were Misses. In politics, it's the same. It's impossible to understand the feeling of power you can have because it affects you in small things, not in big decisions. You enter the meetings first, you have anything you ask for, you cough in the middle of a debate... and everyone goes silent. Miss's time is over for Elon. And now he wonders, "why isn't anyone coming to beg me for anything?"
Q. What was Elon's reaction, as a human being, to that change?
A. It was like a binge for him. He had never experienced anything like it. Look: 18 months ago, I went to see him in Boca Chica [the town in Texas that Musk renamed this year to "Starbase," where SpaceX launches its giant Starship rocket]. And I saw that when he's there, Elon stays in a house made of two 42-square-meter prefabricated houses, placed facing each other, and connected by a roof to protect a barbecue they placed between the two. His bedroom is 2.8 meters long by 2.8 wide. He lives there for weeks, surrounded by bodyguards, several of whom sleep in the other rooms. It's a very informal environment. He is the boss, but there's no hierarchy about who enters those tiny rooms first.
Q. Is his public break with Trump due to that? [Musk, despite attacking Trump, remains one of the biggest financiers of the Republican Party, which the US president controls].
A. Elon leaves the government at the end of May when his term ends. And obviously, Trump tries to reaffirm his power by distancing himself from Elon because people were starting to say that Elon was the real president of the US.
Q. What do you think of that break?
A. Trump and Elon had a very close and intense relationship for six months. And Elon doesn't understand politics well. He believes it works like the private sector, where you appoint the most capable person as a collaborator, even if you hate each other, and you make sure they stay quiet with a good salary and the promise of a stake in the company. He doesn't understand that in politics, you don't choose your collaborators based on their professional ability but on their loyalty. He was very disappointed with some of Trump's appointments, especially that of Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary [Bessent, former right-hand man of George Soros, is considered Musk's biggest political enemy].
Q. Apparently, there was even a physical altercation between Elon and Bessent at the White House.
A. Yes, and Elon said to Trump, "What are you doing? You're appointing idiots!"
Q. Did you talk to your son about that?
A. Yes, I told him, "You're not understanding. Unfortunately, that's how these things are."
Q. After accusing Trump of being a client of the world elite's pimp, Jeffrey Epstein [who died in unclear circumstances in jail during the president's first term], Elon apologized. Did you talk to him about that?
A. Yes. I told him, "Elon, in politics, it's three steps forward and two steps back." And I know what I'm talking about. For 10 years, I was a councilor in Pretoria, and although it's a local position, it's the capital of South Africa, so I dealt a lot with the government. That's where I learned that in politics, you can't get anything done until everyone agrees with you. Many years ago, my then-wife [Maye, Elon and Kimbal's mother] and I were very good friends with the then president of South Africa, PW Botha. And I often told Botha what he had to do until one day he cut me off: "Errol, when you run a country, you have to include everyone. You can't work only with the best." [Botha was the last president of South Africa who refused to dismantle apartheid and author of phrases like "God separated the races," "most blacks are happy, except those who have been fed other ideas," or "Nelson Mandela can rot in jail until he dies or I die, whichever comes first."]
Q. And now, does Elon agree with you? Has he understood the difference between the private and public sectors?
A. Now he does.
Q. Is Elon very impulsive?
A. It's rare. He's a bit like a child. He always has to have his way. But maybe that's how he has built the only economically viable space launch facility in 25 years.
Q. What do you think of Donald Trump?
A. Fantastic. A miracle. Remember: I am an entrepreneur, not an ideologue. Elon and Kimbal were Democrats and now fully support Trump.
Q. You have said that your political experience was very different from Elon's. But, going back to the first question, your career seems similar in the business field. Both have taken tremendous risks. Your anecdote about how in 1986 you exchanged your private plane for an emerald mine seems like something out of a James Bond movie. Do you enjoy going against the norm?
A. I suppose so, I like to do things differently. That's what happened with the plane. In the mid-eighties, South Africa was out of control due to pressure from the West to dismantle apartheid. No white person saw a future in a country with a black government. So I took my plane, a Cessna Golden Eagle, and decided to fly it to England and sell it there.
Q. You didn't make it past Lake Tanganyika.
A. Yes, I landed on a newly built airstrip on the shore of Tanzania, not sure for whom. It was dangerous. You had to drive everywhere because of the hippos, and although the lake is beautiful, you couldn't swim due to crocodiles or go canoeing because of arrows being shot at you.
Q. And there you sold the plane.
A. Yes, the Italians bought the plane from me in cash. But the next day they came back and said, "If you give us the money back, we'll give you a stake in an emerald mine." I accepted, and for six or seven years, I dedicated myself to selling emeralds from the mine, which was at the southern end of the lake, between Zambia and Tanzania, worldwide. They were high-quality stones. The first batch I received was about 100. We cut them in Johannesburg, and everything worked perfectly until laboratory-made emeralds arrived in the early nineties, crashing the market.
Q. But you never registered your mine.
A. No, in Africa, in the eighties, governments had nothing, not even pencils. Everything was sealed with a handshake and paid in cash. Since around 1965, when European colonizers - mainly Britain and France - granted them independence, those were not normal countries.
Q. Why?
A. Until 1965, Africa was very civilized because each country was governed by a European country, and there was law and order. Look at Spain's example. Spain's history is the history of world colonization. Where Spain went, it brought order, civilization, cities... We did the same, but 500 years later. When the Europeans left, everything fell apart. Nothing remained. South Africa today is a lawless country, where even the police chief and Interpol director [Jackie Selebi] was sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption. The African National Congress [ANC, which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid] has looted the country. We are bankrupt. The US has cut all economic aid because South Africa supports Iran, Hamas, and all those terrorist groups. Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia [which also had its own apartheid], is as if it ceased to exist.
Q. Why did that happen?
A. All European countries have practiced racial discrimination. What happened is that South Africa maintained it when it achieved full independence in 1961. So apartheid is not something South Africa invented but something it continued. For example, the Netherlands did not allow people of color to enter its territory until 1920, despite having colonies in countries with people of color. South Africa maintained apartheid for an obvious reason: as soon as European countries left Africa, everything went to hell, civilization ended.
Q. But exactly, what is the reason for the end of civilization?
A. Look at what the UN defines as the average IQ in the world. In Africa, it's 63. In Spain, it's 100; in the UK, 99; in Germany, interestingly, 104; in Japan, 107, and so on. Anyone with an IQ below 70 needs special education. So handing over those countries to people who may be very nice but not very intelligent and therefore will not manage the country like Europeans means those nations will go to hell.
Q. Experts say that these IQ differences are due to educational and economic factors. Do you believe it's due to biological causes?
A. It's biological. IQ has nothing to do with education.
Q. Just to clarify, we are talking about blacks and mulattos.
A. About blacks. Just come to Africa and see where they live, in shantytowns, in holes in the ground... Europeans don't live like that. If you go to Paris, where there are many Third World people, you'll see that the streets are dirty, filthy because, for those immigrants, garbage is a decorative element. So it's very strange that a government is elected by a population with an IQ of 63.
Q. Do you believe democracy and multiculturalism are compatible?
A. I don't know what to say. I was just in London, and it seemed fine where I was, which is a good area. But apparently, in London, only 33% of the population is white. 67% are of color, and the mayor is Muslim. That's sinister. England is starting to seem strange to me because in some places, only a third of the population is English.
Q. Do you think the West should follow Errol and Elon Musk's example and have many children?
A. Absolutely. But let me tell you this: based on my experience, if you tell me that thousands of Spaniards, Italians, or Germans are going to move to London, I'll say it's a fantastic idea. But if you tell me that Congolese or Rwandans are going to move, I'll say, "Oh!" Because they will turn the UK into Congo, into a country where Ebola, dengue, malaria, or river blindness are normal diseases. And also violence, murders, rapes...
Q. How do we know that the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda won't follow in China's footsteps, which 100 years ago was one of the poorest countries in the world, where people were literally dying of hunger and living in perpetual civil war?
A. It's impossible for Congo to ever become like China. China was printing paper money 2,000 years ago. They always achieved extraordinary feats. In April, I went to Stanford University [in California], and many of the students and professors I met there were Chinese. They are the nicest, most decent, civilized, and intelligent people you can imagine. As far as I'm concerned, all the Chinese - and all the Japanese - who want to go to London can go.
Q. Do your children share your views, or are there big arguments at family meals?
A. They share them.
Q. What about Elon?
A. Yes. My views are not based on any crazy ideology but on the experience of having traveled through Africa, where you have to be careful about what you eat and drink because if you make a mistake, you could be dead in two weeks... Think about Spain. It's an exquisitely beautiful country. If you bring people who don't appreciate that beauty, what can you expect other than them destroying it? They won't do it on purpose, but because they don't understand that beauty. I like people to move up in life, so I have a lot of black people working for me in minor roles. They are very useful, helpful, try to do things right, do as they are told, don't argue with you... but I would never live in their communities under their lifestyle.
Q. What do you think of the accusations from the US of "white genocide" in South Africa?
A. It's not true. There is enormous violence, and virtually no police. Whites living in isolated areas are easy targets for criminals. But the criminal gangs are not organized. They just go around and kill whoever they can.
Q. He said he has been in London recently. From there, he flew to Moscow.
A. Yes, Elon asked me not to go. And so did a European royal family with whom I have a close friendship. But I went. And I loved it. Moscow is a gem. Everything is clean, orderly. There is total security. It is a perfect city. And Russian women are incredible. They could all be models. Along with Serbian women, they are the most beautiful women in the world. I spent an entire afternoon with the Russian Foreign Minister [Sergei Lavrov] who explained to me how Ukrainians were trying to carry out a genocide in the Russian-speaking areas of the country. To me, the Ukrainian president [Volodymyr Zelensky] seems corrupt and a dictator.
Q. Vladimir Putin, you don't think he's a dictator?
A. No, no, no. Putin has achieved something very remarkable, which is to keep such a vast and heterogeneous country like Russia united.
Q. Do you and Elon talk often?
A. In this family, there are a lot of girls and boys, and we talk a lot about that, but never about business. I am retired. I'm not going to tell Elon and Kimbal what to do.
Q. When you say "girls and boys," are you referring to Kimbal's and especially Elon's children and girlfriends? [The owner of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and xAI has at least 14 children - 12 of them through artificial insemination - with four women. But, as reported in April by the financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal, he could have up to 70 more children conceived generally in vitro with many other women, many of whom he has selected through his social network X for their support of cryptocurrencies and Trumpism. According to the newspaper, Musk "wants to populate Earth with highly intelligent human beings"].
A. About all the girls and children, but only about family matters.
Q. What was Elon like as a child?
A. My two sons came with me when their mother and I divorced [his daughter, Tosca, went with Maye]. They were very good boys. Since I had continuous commitments, if I gave them an order, I expected them to follow it, so they paid a lot of attention to me, and there were no problems. They didn't give me any trouble. And we were constantly traveling. The first time we went to Europe, they were six and seven years old respectively [Elon is a year older than Kimbal]. When we traveled to the US, seven and eight, and with eight and nine, I took them to China. So, they had to be responsible.
Q. There are stories that Elon was bullied at school.
A. In school, they were always insulting and provoking each other. You know, kids are like that. I never saw bullying or abuse of younger kids by older ones. Besides, the school wouldn't have allowed it.
Q. There is also the anecdote that Elon ended up in the hospital when his classmates pushed him down the stairs because he had mocked one of them, whose father had just died of cancer.
A. What happened is that when a much younger child than Elon said his father had died, he told him, "Your father died because he was an idiot." So the young child pushed him down the stairs. He flew two floors and spent 10 days in the hospital. When I found out, I thought about reporting the child to the police, but then I was told what had happened, and I saw the kid crying in sorrow, so I told Elon, "You can't say those things to people." In the end, I took Elon and Kimbal to another school. But Elon doesn't listen. Look at what he's calling Donald Trump now!
Q. It seems that Elon has always had a tendency to verbally attack.
A. When he was very young, he was always reading, and sometimes there were adults who would say to him, "Hey, kid, are you really reading that book or just looking at the pictures?" And he would reply, "Are you stupid or what's wrong with you?" I always told him he couldn't call people stupid, and he always replied that they were stupid. Even today, he still calls people "idiots," and I keep telling him "don't do it."
Q. You say that Elon and Kimbal were very good boys, but they stole emeralds from your mine to sell them at Tiffany's jewelry store in New York.
A. No. We were in New York in 1989. I went to a meeting, and when I returned, they told me they had taken two emeralds to Tiffany's, in case they were interested in buying them, and they said yes. We went, and they paid me $800 for one and $1,200 for the other. Four days later, we returned, and they showed us the cheaper one. They had set it in a ring with a small diamond and priced it at $21,500.
Q. Is it true that your children went to school in a Rolls-Royce?
A. Yes. At 27, I switched from Mercedes to Rolls-Royce. The second one I bought was a Corniche [a convertible model], and since the kids were school-age, they usually went to school in a Rolls.
Q. Would you like Elon to relax a bit and enjoy life more?
A. What worries me is that he doesn't have a permanent girlfriend who goes with him everywhere. He has Shivon [Zilis], but she is more interested in science than anything else. [Zilis is the former executive of Musk's controversial neuroscience company Neuralink. Both have had four children through artificial insemination, and neither she nor Elon Musk have ever stated that they were in any kind of relationship]. Kimbal has been very lucky with that girl [Christiana Wyly, his second wife]. She is very beautiful and goes with him everywhere [Kimbal has had three children with two other women]. But when it comes to enjoying life, Elon has a good time.
Q. Do you think Elon has developed a certain aversion to commitment after his parents' divorce and that you have a reputation as a ladies' man?
A. Me?
Q. Yes, you have had many relationships throughout your life. Elon lives in what The Wall Street Journal has described, citing his son's acquaintances, as "a harem drama" with the mothers of his alleged more than 70 children.
A. I believe that my sons and I are real men. We love women. I'm sure I don't have to tell that to a Spaniard. I have been to Spain many times, and just by seeing the women on the street, it brightened my day.