Elon Musk: Family Rooted in Apartheid
Transcript of video initially posted to TikTok.
Source: People.com
Let’s talk about Elon Musk, the immigrant who wants to deport other immigrants.
As we know, Elon has played a major role in American politics, especially in this last election. We are all too familiar with Elon's antics, his multiple business entrepreneurial ventures, and the atrocious comments and remarks coming out from his ex-wives, the mothers of his children, and, unfortunately, his trans daughter.
But did all of that come from thin air, or was this learned behavior from his own father, Errol Musk? Now this is Errol Musk, his father.
Source: Forbes
Elon has gone on record saying he is the worst man he has ever met, that anything horrific you can think of, his father has done it, and perhaps maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Elon's father also had multiple children from multiple failed marriages and even went on to date one of his stepdaughters. Elon Musk’s mom, Mae, claims that he was an abusive, alcoholic father who at one time chased her around the house with a knife.
Errol made his money through engineering and business ventures. He was also a politician in the administrative capital of Pretoria. Errol claimed to own multiple emerald mines, and he was known for not paying the African black labor that was doing the mining. Take it a step further up the family tree, and we have Errol Musk's dad, or Elon's grandfather, who is an army sergeant in the South African army.
This may seem innocent, but what's going on when you hear or see white men in power in Africa, specifically South Africa, is a remnant of the Berlin conference, which is a further remnant of the colonial slave trading days.
Source: Al Jazeera
For those unfamiliar with the Berlin Conference of 1884, it was a conference of the United States, France, Germany, Britain, and other European superpowers that met in Berlin and cut up Africa into essentially what it is today. They all agreed on who would have the stronghold in what regions, and Britain chose South Africa as they had a long lineage there, and we can get into that later.
Whether or not Elon's grandfather was someone of power – he wasn't as an army sergeant – what's important to realize is that anyone white working in South Africa, especially in the early 1900s as his grandfather would be, was doing so as a tangential arm of Britain. There was also some Dutch influence in South Africa, but mainly, from 1948 to 1992, apartheid was the domination of an all-white South African government that was working in connection with Britain. So although he was a low-rank military official, he did hold privilege as a white male.
Source: Wikipedia
Nelson Mandela, a political activist and also a political prisoner who was an outspoken dissenter of apartheid. He would spend 27 years out on Robbin's Island, which I've actually been to when I was studying African studies as my minor in college, and spent 3 months backpacking and studying abroad in Southern Africa.
As a prisoner out on Robben Island, there is a quarry, and that is where they would have their political prisoners, just like Nelson Mandela and other people who spoke out, without any sort of protection, eyeglasses, or anything. They would work 12 to 14 hours a day out in the quarry mining, breathing in the harmful sediments while also not having access to sun protection when the sunlight would bounce off the rocks, essentially blinding them. So it was not uncommon for these political prisoners to develop any sort of respiratory or vision issues.
A picture I took on Robben Island.
A photo of me on Robben Island looking back at Cape Town, South Africa.
A lot of folks celebrate Nelson Mandela's journey after apartheid. He did become president, but it's a little bit more sinister than that. And it's not sinister because of Nelson Mandela. It's sinister in what the whites in power during and after apartheid did.
Before the whites in power withdrew all the segregation laws, they went through and made sure that all the whites political and business figures owned all the businesses, that every form of serious capital and investment belonged to the whites.
So while Africans, South Africans, such as Nelson Mandela, and the folks that he fought for did get “equal rights”, they had no claim of ownership to anything that could empower their life in any sort of financial way. Furthermore, during apartheid, the education for South Africans was so poor that many of them were illiterate or had low reading levels, meaning, yes, they were free to go and move about the streets and go to schools and go to work, but they were so far behind what the whites had done to them and to oppress them that they couldn't get a leg up.
Source: George Washington University
Elon's dad, Errol, was a wealthy white politician who knew how to navigate political systems, buddy up with political allies, and subjugate people into horrid conditions. While Elon and his dad have both come out and said that they didn't really support apartheid, they sure did profit off of it. Elon spent the first 17 years of his life profiting off the privilege of apartheid and the subsequent rhetoric.
Elon Musk is not some asshole tech bro. He's a well-trained, well-funded, experienced person who comes from a long line of political oppression, power, and control. This is not new to him. He's just getting started. As Elon continues to form into whatever supervillain this is, unrecognizable by his former ex-wives and children, we must consider the worst.
Source: The Times.com
Leigh Larson graduated as a Presidential Scholar from the University of Texas at Austin. She majored in International Relations, focusing on African Studies and Environmental Sciences. She was also a scholar in the Thomas Jefferson Center of Core Texts & Ideas program and served as Director of SURE Walk, a UT Student Government agency. Ms. Larson studied climate change, vegetation, and culture dynamics in a summer study abroad program in Botswana. Following college, she interned at Fort Worth Sister Cities, and attended seminary at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ms. Larson was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the USAFR Chaplain Candidate program for seminarian students until she left the seminary, therefore no longer qualifying her and was honorably discharged from the USAFR program. She helped to start a non-profit, Recovery Cafe Longmont, as their Program Manager before she left to pursue tech. Ms. Larson now owns a web and graphic agency in Montana and has written and designed two children’s books. When not volunteering or digital storytelling, she can be found camping in the woods and traveling the country with her dog, Professor Huckleberry.
