Elon Musk and other tech moguls with roots in apartheid-era South Africa have been shaped by the history of right-wing white nationalism
Elon Musk arrives for Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. (Kenny Holston/Pool/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump returned to power vowing to refocus the energy and resources of the American government on issues at home while abandoning global crusades over human rights. Yet in its first weeks in office, the Trump administration has made targeting South Africa over alleged crimes against its white minority a surprising focus of its foreign policy. This campaign has included suspending foreign aid to the country, public denunciations by top U.S. diplomats and even an order that white Afrikaners be allowed into the U.S. as refugees — a departure from Trump’s otherwise closed-door policy on immigration and asylum.
It is impossible to understand the Trump administration’s approach to South Africa without recognizing the place the country holds in the demonology of the global right wing. Also key is the relationship between the Republican Party and Silicon Valley stalwarts like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and David Sacks — all of whom trace their origins to the country.
Musk and Thiel, in particular, have carried their critiques of South Africa into their broader political worldviews, aligning themselves with an American conservative movement that decries “woke” policies and progressive governance. Their rhetoric mirrors a broader view among right-leaning thinkers that efforts to foster social justice threaten economic prosperity. Their arguments also draw a specious equivalence between the struggle against apartheid and contemporary debates about social justice in the U.S., ignoring the historical differences between the two.
The Trump administration’s campaign against South Africa was prompted by the passage of a new law aimed at giving the South African government greater powers of land expropriation. The U.S. has also expressed displeasure over South Africa’s championing of a legal case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Amid threats of further escalation, including economic sanctions, the Trump-led campaign against South Africa has taken on geopolitical implications, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing that he would boycott the G20 Summit in Johannesburg this year — an unprecedented snub to Pretoria.
The current right-wing backlash against South Africa is primarily based on accusations that the country’s ruling government is engaged in land confiscations targeting white Afrikaners — claims that, in right-wing U.S. media, are often accompanied by subtle hints that the same fate may one day befall white Americans in a diversifying country. Such accusations have grown louder as prominent members of the white South African diaspora have taken major positions in American politics.
On the same day that Trump, in a Truth Social post, claimed that South Africa was treating “certain classes of people” very badly, Musk took to X, the platform he purchased in 2022, to accuse South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of enacting “openly racist laws” — only the latest statement by the Tesla billionaire and right-wing political icon suggesting that South Africa was transforming into a racialized tyranny.
Such allegations do not represent the reality of what is taking place in South Africa, where the white minority remains a highly privileged class, and the charges have been rejected even by white-led political parties. South Africa’s primary opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, which is seen by many as the party of white capital, quickly released a statement accusing Trump of misreading the facts about land reform.
Landownership remains one of South Africa’s most contentious issues. In 1975, the apartheid government passed a sweeping land expropriation law that stripped the majority-Black South African population of property rights, leaving most land in white hands. After apartheid, democratic governments led by the African National Congress inherited these powers but have used them far less aggressively. The lingering fear is that South Africa will follow Zimbabwe’s path and seize white-owned farmland without compensation — yet nothing remotely similar has occurred. Despite a legal change enacted in January 2025 to allow land expropriation without compensation only in limited cases, such as absentee ownership or public health risks, white landowners have not been widely targeted by the South African government.
Following public threats by the Trump administration and repeated comments by Musk about South Africa on social media, Ramaphosa called Musk on Feb. 6, engaging in a conversation that a government spokesperson later tersely described as “logical.” There is no sign that the conflict between the new administration and South Africa is about to abate, and the advisers surrounding Trump are likely to continue playing a role in maintaining it.
The personal background of Musk, the most high-profile South African attached to the new administration, provides an interesting window into the attitudes of the broader white diaspora. Musk grew up during apartheid as part of a white family that, like many others, would eventually leave the country after the system of minority rule collapsed. His story is often told as one of brilliance, ambition and incredible wealth — with his father even claiming that Musk traveled to school in a Rolls Royce. But it’s also emblematic of the bitter aftermath of apartheid as well as the unresolved racial tensions and economic inequality that continue to plague the country.
Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal societies. While political power has shifted to the Black majority, economic power remains concentrated in the hands of the white minority. Modern office towers, largely owned by white South Africans, dominate the skyline of Johannesburg, while makeshift settlements sprawl below. According to official statistics, less than 10% of the population controls over 70% of private sector wealth — a glaring reminder of the enduring economic hierarchies rooted in apartheid, which have survived the formal end of that system.
This persistent inequality is a direct consequence of centuries of systemic oppression. From the 17th century, European settlers established a racial hierarchy that placed white Europeans at the top and Black Africans at the bottom. This system was formalized through laws like the Natives Land Act of 1913, which restricted Black South Africans to owning just 7% of the land, displacing them from ancestral territories and confining them to overcrowded reserves. Today, many still live in apartheid-era townships, with limited access to health care, education and economic opportunities.
The generational wealth and social networks built during apartheid continue to advantage the white minority, perpetuating the divide. But the loss of formal political control by whites has nonetheless generated bitterness and led to a desire for vengeance over the country’s shortcomings since apartheid. Popular right-wing narratives, often amplified by figures like Musk, portray South Africa as a failed state, blaming liberal policies and alleged antiwhite racism from its new rulers for its dysfunction, while ignoring the impact of entrenched economic inequality in the country.
Amid this maelstrom, news outlets catering to conservative Americans have in recent years begun highlighting the alleged targeting of the Afrikaner farming community, promoting a story that whites are now a besieged minority on the brink of being dispossessed by a vengeful and unworthy Black population. This narrative, rooted more in emotion than fact, obscures the complex realities of a nation still grappling with the legacy of its past, where white South Africans continue to enjoy a comfortable status, and numerous different visions for the future compete for primacy.
The white South African diaspora, much of it spread across the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, has played a key role in promoting the narrative of racial besiegement. Among this group of white South Africans, who grew up during apartheid and then fled the country when minority rule ended, racist views are depressingly common, alongside disdain for liberal or left-wing policies. Despite building new lives abroad — and, in cases like Musk’s and those of his fellow tech oligarchs, even becoming wildly successful — many in the Afrikaner diaspora continue to carry with them a deep-seated fear of change as well as a commitment to preserving the conservative ideas they learned in South Africa.
The dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid regime in the early 1990s was viewed by much of the world as a historic victory against racial oppression as well as a triumph of postwar liberalism. Yet those who felt that they were on the losing end of this battle took a much darker view of these events, framing South Africa’s story as a cautionary tale.
The Musk family again provides a prominent example. Musk’s father, Errol Musk, has allegedly expressed overtly racist sentiments about South Africa’s transformation. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, Errol once wrote in an email to his son, “With no whites here, the blacks will go back to the trees.” Such statements reflect a broader sentiment among some white South African expatriates who, citing crime and a breakdown in public services, believe that the country’s governance has deteriorated under Black leadership.
Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was also a prominent figure in the far-right Technocracy movement — which promoted expert management of society over democracy — held pro-Nazi sympathies and was imprisoned in Canada for two months for publishing documents opposing involvement in World War II. The New Yorker has described Haldeman in no uncertain terms as “a pro-apartheid, antisemitic conspiracy theorist who blamed much of what bothered him about the world on Jewish financiers.”
Despite the fact that Musk was raised in South Africa during the height of apartheid, he has maintained a conspicuous silence about what life was like in a racially bifurcated society. His comments about the country mostly center on the “tragedy” of South Africa, on its present dysfunction and on the inflammatory rhetoric about white people from hard-left parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters.
In recent years, Musk has emerged as an avowed supporter of far-right parties across the globe, including, most recently, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. His X feed has become a clearinghouse of extreme-right conspiracies as well as attacks on migrants, liberals and other perceived enemies of the right. During an inauguration event for Trump, Musk upped the ante even further by performing what was widely believed to be a Nazi salute to the crowd.
A recent article in Business Day by Jonny Steinberg, one of South Africa’s leading columnists, argued that Musk’s current views echo those of many white South Africans in the 1970s and 1980s. Steinberg writes that “in Musk’s interventions into British and German politics he has warned again and again of imminent civil war. He has also been preoccupied with gangs of dark-skinned men raping underage white girls. And with white people having too few children to reproduce themselves in sufficient numbers. And with the darker races coming in to replace them.”
Musk is far from alone in this stance. His fellow tech mogul Thiel, who spent part of his childhood in Johannesburg, has been quoted as saying that concerns about apartheid were “overblown,” allegedly even telling peers that apartheid “works” because it was economically sound. According to his biographer Max Chafkin, Thiel’s views on South Africa’s governance have heavily influenced his libertarian leanings and his disdain for state intervention in economic and social affairs.
As journalist Chris McGreal recently noted, Musk and Thiel grew up with incredible privilege in a system of near-absolute racial hierarchy. “Those who claimed to reject apartheid sought to explain this privilege not as the result of systemic racial oppression but the natural order of things thanks to their own abilities,” McGreal writes. “That in turn led some to regard all forms of government as oppressive and true liberty as an individual battle for survival.”
The Trump administration’s recent actions against South Africa mark the opening salvo in what could become an escalating conflict over the legacy of apartheid. By cutting funding and boycotting diplomatic engagements, the U.S. has signaled a willingness to weaponize its influence, potentially triggering a review of a key agreement known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This trade agreement, which grants select African countries preferential access to U.S. markets, is a lifeline for the country’s economy, supporting billions in exports and thousands of jobs. If the U.S. revokes Pretoria’s AGOA status, it would not only destabilize South Africa’s economy but also send a chilling message to other African nations about the costs of defying American political whims.
Not all white South Africans are Afrikaners, and white-led political groups are split over Trump’s recent actions against South Africa’s land policies. AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights group, has actively lobbied in the U.S., with leader Ernst Roets courting right-wing allies to frame land expropriation as a threat to property rights and minority protections. Meanwhile, Agri SA, which represents commercial farmers, has taken a more pragmatic approach, advocating negotiation and legal safeguards over foreign interference. Ironically, Trump’s intervention is having an unintended effect — uniting some South Africans across party lines. Recent reports suggest that white South Africans are also snubbing Trump’s offer of resettlement in the U.S.
By aligning with the most reactionary diaspora voices, the Trump administration is not only misreading the realities of South Africa’s transition but also jeopardizing the fragile progress the country has made, as well as America’s own relationship with one of Africa’s most important states.
The dark vision of the past held by individuals like Musk and others from the right-wing Afrikaner diaspora now threatens to shape America’s future. Empowered by Trump, Musk is leading an effort to dismantle and restructure the institutions of American governance before rebuilding them, as many now fear, in a manner amenable to his own far-right ideological interests. With little to stop him, Musk may apply the lessons he took away from his experience in South Africa to determine what 21st-century life in the U.S. will look like.
In his analysis of Musk’s family background, Steinberg asks whether Musk’s personal history in the country is driving his political positions today, and concludes that the broader ideological commitments animating apartheid have, without question, come back to life.
“Apartheid’s deepest ideas are back,” he writes. “They are circulating in the Western world. They have purchase.”
President Donald Trump returned to power vowing to refocus the energy and resources of the American government on issues at home while abandoning global crusades over human rights. Yet in its first weeks in office, the Trump administration has made targeting South Africa over alleged crimes against its white minority a surprising focus of its foreign policy. This campaign has included suspending foreign aid to the country, public denunciations by top U.S. diplomats and even an order that white Afrikaners be allowed into the U.S. as refugees — a departure from Trump’s otherwise closed-door policy on immigration and asylum.
It is impossible to understand the Trump administration’s approach to South Africa without recognizing the place the country holds in the demonology of the global right wing. Also key is the relationship between the Republican Party and Silicon Valley stalwarts like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and David Sacks — all of whom trace their origins to the country.
Musk and Thiel, in particular, have carried their critiques of South Africa into their broader political worldviews, aligning themselves with an American conservative movement that decries “woke” policies and progressive governance. Their rhetoric mirrors a broader view among right-leaning thinkers that efforts to foster social justice threaten economic prosperity. Their arguments also draw a specious equivalence between the struggle against apartheid and contemporary debates about social justice in the U.S., ignoring the historical differences between the two.
The Trump administration’s campaign against South Africa was prompted by the passage of a new law aimed at giving the South African government greater powers of land expropriation. The U.S. has also expressed displeasure over South Africa’s championing of a legal case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Amid threats of further escalation, including economic sanctions, the Trump-led campaign against South Africa has taken on geopolitical implications, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing that he would boycott the G20 Summit in Johannesburg this year — an unprecedented snub to Pretoria.
The current right-wing backlash against South Africa is primarily based on accusations that the country’s ruling government is engaged in land confiscations targeting white Afrikaners — claims that, in right-wing U.S. media, are often accompanied by subtle hints that the same fate may one day befall white Americans in a diversifying country. Such accusations have grown louder as prominent members of the white South African diaspora have taken major positions in American politics.
On the same day that Trump, in a Truth Social post, claimed that South Africa was treating “certain classes of people” very badly, Musk took to X, the platform he purchased in 2022, to accuse South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of enacting “openly racist laws” — only the latest statement by the Tesla billionaire and right-wing political icon suggesting that South Africa was transforming into a racialized tyranny.
Such allegations do not represent the reality of what is taking place in South Africa, where the white minority remains a highly privileged class, and the charges have been rejected even by white-led political parties. South Africa’s primary opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, which is seen by many as the party of white capital, quickly released a statement accusing Trump of misreading the facts about land reform.
Landownership remains one of South Africa’s most contentious issues. In 1975, the apartheid government passed a sweeping land expropriation law that stripped the majority-Black South African population of property rights, leaving most land in white hands. After apartheid, democratic governments led by the African National Congress inherited these powers but have used them far less aggressively. The lingering fear is that South Africa will follow Zimbabwe’s path and seize white-owned farmland without compensation — yet nothing remotely similar has occurred. Despite a legal change enacted in January 2025 to allow land expropriation without compensation only in limited cases, such as absentee ownership or public health risks, white landowners have not been widely targeted by the South African government.
Following public threats by the Trump administration and repeated comments by Musk about South Africa on social media, Ramaphosa called Musk on Feb. 6, engaging in a conversation that a government spokesperson later tersely described as “logical.” There is no sign that the conflict between the new administration and South Africa is about to abate, and the advisers surrounding Trump are likely to continue playing a role in maintaining it.
The personal background of Musk, the most high-profile South African attached to the new administration, provides an interesting window into the attitudes of the broader white diaspora. Musk grew up during apartheid as part of a white family that, like many others, would eventually leave the country after the system of minority rule collapsed. His story is often told as one of brilliance, ambition and incredible wealth — with his father even claiming that Musk traveled to school in a Rolls Royce. But it’s also emblematic of the bitter aftermath of apartheid as well as the unresolved racial tensions and economic inequality that continue to plague the country.
Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal societies. While political power has shifted to the Black majority, economic power remains concentrated in the hands of the white minority. Modern office towers, largely owned by white South Africans, dominate the skyline of Johannesburg, while makeshift settlements sprawl below. According to official statistics, less than 10% of the population controls over 70% of private sector wealth — a glaring reminder of the enduring economic hierarchies rooted in apartheid, which have survived the formal end of that system.
This persistent inequality is a direct consequence of centuries of systemic oppression. From the 17th century, European settlers established a racial hierarchy that placed white Europeans at the top and Black Africans at the bottom. This system was formalized through laws like the Natives Land Act of 1913, which restricted Black South Africans to owning just 7% of the land, displacing them from ancestral territories and confining them to overcrowded reserves. Today, many still live in apartheid-era townships, with limited access to health care, education and economic opportunities.
The generational wealth and social networks built during apartheid continue to advantage the white minority, perpetuating the divide. But the loss of formal political control by whites has nonetheless generated bitterness and led to a desire for vengeance over the country’s shortcomings since apartheid. Popular right-wing narratives, often amplified by figures like Musk, portray South Africa as a failed state, blaming liberal policies and alleged antiwhite racism from its new rulers for its dysfunction, while ignoring the impact of entrenched economic inequality in the country.
Amid this maelstrom, news outlets catering to conservative Americans have in recent years begun highlighting the alleged targeting of the Afrikaner farming community, promoting a story that whites are now a besieged minority on the brink of being dispossessed by a vengeful and unworthy Black population. This narrative, rooted more in emotion than fact, obscures the complex realities of a nation still grappling with the legacy of its past, where white South Africans continue to enjoy a comfortable status, and numerous different visions for the future compete for primacy.
The white South African diaspora, much of it spread across the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, has played a key role in promoting the narrative of racial besiegement. Among this group of white South Africans, who grew up during apartheid and then fled the country when minority rule ended, racist views are depressingly common, alongside disdain for liberal or left-wing policies. Despite building new lives abroad — and, in cases like Musk’s and those of his fellow tech oligarchs, even becoming wildly successful — many in the Afrikaner diaspora continue to carry with them a deep-seated fear of change as well as a commitment to preserving the conservative ideas they learned in South Africa.
The dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid regime in the early 1990s was viewed by much of the world as a historic victory against racial oppression as well as a triumph of postwar liberalism. Yet those who felt that they were on the losing end of this battle took a much darker view of these events, framing South Africa’s story as a cautionary tale.
The Musk family again provides a prominent example. Musk’s father, Errol Musk, has allegedly expressed overtly racist sentiments about South Africa’s transformation. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, Errol once wrote in an email to his son, “With no whites here, the blacks will go back to the trees.” Such statements reflect a broader sentiment among some white South African expatriates who, citing crime and a breakdown in public services, believe that the country’s governance has deteriorated under Black leadership.
Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was also a prominent figure in the far-right Technocracy movement — which promoted expert management of society over democracy — held pro-Nazi sympathies and was imprisoned in Canada for two months for publishing documents opposing involvement in World War II. The New Yorker has described Haldeman in no uncertain terms as “a pro-apartheid, antisemitic conspiracy theorist who blamed much of what bothered him about the world on Jewish financiers.”
Despite the fact that Musk was raised in South Africa during the height of apartheid, he has maintained a conspicuous silence about what life was like in a racially bifurcated society. His comments about the country mostly center on the “tragedy” of South Africa, on its present dysfunction and on the inflammatory rhetoric about white people from hard-left parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters.
In recent years, Musk has emerged as an avowed supporter of far-right parties across the globe, including, most recently, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. His X feed has become a clearinghouse of extreme-right conspiracies as well as attacks on migrants, liberals and other perceived enemies of the right. During an inauguration event for Trump, Musk upped the ante even further by performing what was widely believed to be a Nazi salute to the crowd.
A recent article in Business Day by Jonny Steinberg, one of South Africa’s leading columnists, argued that Musk’s current views echo those of many white South Africans in the 1970s and 1980s. Steinberg writes that “in Musk’s interventions into British and German politics he has warned again and again of imminent civil war. He has also been preoccupied with gangs of dark-skinned men raping underage white girls. And with white people having too few children to reproduce themselves in sufficient numbers. And with the darker races coming in to replace them.”
Musk is far from alone in this stance. His fellow tech mogul Thiel, who spent part of his childhood in Johannesburg, has been quoted as saying that concerns about apartheid were “overblown,” allegedly even telling peers that apartheid “works” because it was economically sound. According to his biographer Max Chafkin, Thiel’s views on South Africa’s governance have heavily influenced his libertarian leanings and his disdain for state intervention in economic and social affairs.
As journalist Chris McGreal recently noted, Musk and Thiel grew up with incredible privilege in a system of near-absolute racial hierarchy. “Those who claimed to reject apartheid sought to explain this privilege not as the result of systemic racial oppression but the natural order of things thanks to their own abilities,” McGreal writes. “That in turn led some to regard all forms of government as oppressive and true liberty as an individual battle for survival.”
The Trump administration’s recent actions against South Africa mark the opening salvo in what could become an escalating conflict over the legacy of apartheid. By cutting funding and boycotting diplomatic engagements, the U.S. has signaled a willingness to weaponize its influence, potentially triggering a review of a key agreement known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This trade agreement, which grants select African countries preferential access to U.S. markets, is a lifeline for the country’s economy, supporting billions in exports and thousands of jobs. If the U.S. revokes Pretoria’s AGOA status, it would not only destabilize South Africa’s economy but also send a chilling message to other African nations about the costs of defying American political whims.
Not all white South Africans are Afrikaners, and white-led political groups are split over Trump’s recent actions against South Africa’s land policies. AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights group, has actively lobbied in the U.S., with leader Ernst Roets courting right-wing allies to frame land expropriation as a threat to property rights and minority protections. Meanwhile, Agri SA, which represents commercial farmers, has taken a more pragmatic approach, advocating negotiation and legal safeguards over foreign interference. Ironically, Trump’s intervention is having an unintended effect — uniting some South Africans across party lines. Recent reports suggest that white South Africans are also snubbing Trump’s offer of resettlement in the U.S.
By aligning with the most reactionary diaspora voices, the Trump administration is not only misreading the realities of South Africa’s transition but also jeopardizing the fragile progress the country has made, as well as America’s own relationship with one of Africa’s most important states.
The dark vision of the past held by individuals like Musk and others from the right-wing Afrikaner diaspora now threatens to shape America’s future. Empowered by Trump, Musk is leading an effort to dismantle and restructure the institutions of American governance before rebuilding them, as many now fear, in a manner amenable to his own far-right ideological interests. With little to stop him, Musk may apply the lessons he took away from his experience in South Africa to determine what 21st-century life in the U.S. will look like.
In his analysis of Musk’s family background, Steinberg asks whether Musk’s personal history in the country is driving his political positions today, and concludes that the broader ideological commitments animating apartheid have, without question, come back to life.
“Apartheid’s deepest ideas are back,” he writes. “They are circulating in the Western world. They have purchase.”
No comments:
Post a Comment