Errol Musk, whose busy loins begat Elon (and a child by Elon’s stepsister), gives the kind of sexist, racist quotes that make digital media salivate. Not a week goes by without Errol (who was born in 1946, the same year as US President Donald Trump) leaping at interview offers to offload his opinions, thoughts, advice to governments, women, his son and the world at large. Like a prophet from a dying age.
Circling above like a bird of prey is the algorithm. And Errol Musk is an algorithmic wet dream.
Feral Errol generates quotes that predate civilisation as we know it almost as regularly as Trump and his overlord son, Elon, the richest man in the world, who has Petri-dished 13 “acknowledged” children.
The unholy trinity of the internet
They are the apex predators of the pyramid that trickles down to the Joe Rogans, Andrew Tates and other testosterone-fuelled Maga influencers on Musk’s X, and inserting themselves everywhere else.
Make no mistake, there are many women in this squad. First among equals is Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, who wears bling like war medals to go with her machine gun while shaven-headed Venezuelan deportees cower in a prison cell in El Salvador. Viral in 60 seconds.
From revealing that he once thought Elon was “retarded” and the notion that a woman who has had many sexual partners is “dirty” to suggesting that Afrikaners are “stupid”, there is no filter to Errol’s brain. Much like Trump’s free-styling free speech.
Political analyst Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh pulled off a coup with his hosting of Big Daddy Musk on his YouTube channel SMWX on 13 April. Like the others in the trinity, Errol loves and craves attention and acknowledgement. This takes up so much time that self-reflection would be impossible and besides, it is only for sissies.
And so Mpofu-Walsh let the old man ramble on, not interrupting while he set out his life of extreme privilege and political connection and the lives his children enjoyed scooting around on jets. Until the little empire all came crashing down.
Elon Musk arrives for a town hall wearing a cheese hat at the KI Convention Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on 30 March 2025. (Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images) | Errol Musk. (Photo: Deon Raath / Gallo Images)
They lived, he informed Mpofu-Walsh, in a grand house in Pretoria, now occupied by the EU ambassador. “Did you know that?” he asks a sanguine Mpofu-Walsh. Elon grew up in a mansion decorated with leftover flowers brought personally to their home by Elize Botha, wife of then prime minister PW Botha, the iron man of apartheid known as the Big Crocodile.
Perhaps the sweet smell of the blossoms masked what was going on outside the walls of the mansion, where the revolution simmered and periodically delivered bombs in Wimpy Bars and detainees falling out of windows at John Vorster Square, home to the police’s Security Branch.
Then, when things got hot in 1989, they all scrambled for an exit, with Errol claiming that some of the best minds left the country then. Poor South Africa, left behind all alone, bereft and deprived of such talent. What a catastrophe.
The PayPal mafia
Exports Papa Musk might be referring to are Peter Thiel, David Sacks and Roelof Botha, now known as the “PayPal mafia”.
Do listen and watch Errol offloading on SMWX. It will take about an hour of your time, but will place in context the contours of his mind and the narrow pathways that shape this thinking.
What becomes clear is that this is a class of individual who moves through the world transactionally. Perhaps it is because the Musks have uprooted themselves so often to chase some Aryan dream that they are culturally marooned and money is where the roots are. Community in transaction.
Like the immigrant Trumps, who uprooted themselves from Scotland and Germany to settle in the US.
God bless South Africa
The sense of community and belonging the rest of us might feel, or the commitment to making South Africa better for all of us, has no Velcro in their neck of the woods. There is no Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu abantu (there should be no need to translate any more, but here it is: a person is a person through other people) because they have hearts that belong to money, cash, moola.
Although Elon Musk might ride the PR that what he does is good for humanity, our eyes and hearts tell us otherwise.
Travel across this country and see for yourself the compassion and humanity among the wreckage of the past still strewn in our path. It is remarkable. So too is the cruelty.
Those who did not flee but saw a future for South Africa, no matter how blurry, and remain today celebrate our freedom, thank you very much.
Read the preamble to our Constitution. Step back a second and look at the government of national unity Cabinet (yes, yes, they are bickering, but what did we expect?), and you will see who we are. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
