The incredible destiny of Errol and Maye, Elon Musk’s parents

Before Elon becomes Musk, you have to imagine a little boy with an IQ of 155, who understands very early how a switch (really) works, and who takes refuge in science fiction books, comics and video games . But, as is often the case behind the stories of megalomaniacal visionaries, lies a tormented childhood. That of Elon Musk begins with parents who think he is deaf, because he never answers them. A battery of tests reveals that he hears very well: it’s just that he doesn’t want to respond. Then, a diagnosis is made: little Elon has Asperger’s syndrome. However, this does not necessarily explain it.

To understand the extraordinary trajectory of the indomitable – and formidable – boss of Tesla, let’s head to the land where he was born: South Africa. There, little Elon spends his school days looking out the window. Perhaps he already imagines launching his rockets and colonizing Mars. Or probably he is also trying to escape the chaotic couple that his parents form: Errol and Maye Musk. Two personalities portrayed as the main culprits for Elon’s unstable temperament. As much as they were decisive in its success.

Errol, the evil father

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, in the midst of apartheid. At school, the boy quickly becomes the playground scapegoat. At home, he aligns lines of computer code very early. But here again, the atmosphere is not there. His father, Errol, is tyrannical and humiliating. “My father called me an idiot all the time,” he once told the magazine Rolling Stones . Then added: “You have no idea what a bad person my father is.” We won’t know more.

Musk’s parents divorced in 1979. Strangely, Elon, who was only 9 years old at the time, chose to stay with his father. Solitary, he escapes into books and becomes even more passionate about computers. His father Errol, an engineer who made his career in Pretoria, was the first to believe in him. In the program “Envoyé Spécial”, broadcast in November on France 2, he tells this anecdote about his son: “He must have been 11 years old, he told me that the university was organizing a seminar to teach computer science and he wanted to go. I called the university and was told it was forbidden for children. I insisted, promised that he would come in a suit and tie. Two hours later, when I came to pick him up, I found him in his shirt sleeves giving a speech to all the adults in suits and big glasses around him. And one of them said to me: “This boy, we have to buy him a computer.” I said, “Okay, how much does it cost?” – “8000 dollars.” Ugh… But I bought one from him and it’s probably the best investment of my life.”

Errol Musk is right. From that moment on, with his head full of ideas, Elon immersed himself in IT. On the side, he traveled a lot with his family, received a Rolex from his father when he came of age… The rest is known to everyone: the young South African went to study in Canada, became a multimillionaire with the sale of his first box, Zip2 , a start-up producing online content for the press, which he set up with his brother, Kimbal. Then will follow PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX.

A father-son duo under tension

If Elon would not have become Elon Musk without Errol, the two men would be at odds today. It must be said that Musk Sr. is a complex man. In 2022, when asked if he is proud of his son, he simply answers: “No.” And when asked why, he naturally adds that he is part of a family that has “accomplished a lot for a very long time,” and that “it’s not like it’s new.” Atmosphere…

However, Errol Musk shares several points in common with his son. Like him, he is a Trumpist from the start – he also thinks he is the one who converted Elon -. The 78-year-old South African also believes that Covid is a conspiracy, and that women are there above all to have children. He himself is the father of 7 children, born to three different partners; as for Elon, he has 12, also from three women. On the romantic level, Errol’s affair with Jana Bezuidehnout, the daughter of his second wife, forty-two years his junior, made headlines in the celebrity press a few years ago. The man had two children with her.

Although Elon and Errol have grown apart, the son recently redid his father’s security system. Electrified barbed wire, cameras, alarms… Nothing has been neglected in the seaside villa, located two hours north of Cape Town, where Errol is enjoying his retirement. “Elon decided to do this because we receive many threats, especially since he attacked the Biden administration,” the septuagenarian told “Special Envoy”. “I have crazy people who show up sometimes. The other day a guy came in with the brilliant idea that Elon should give him $10 billion. And then, we were robbed: one day, 7 black men, armed, entered my house and opened fire. Unfortunately for them, I’m a good shot myself and I killed 3 of them.”

Maye, adventurer at heart

If Elon Musk doesn’t get along with his father, he seems to have made up for it with his mother, Maye. At 76 years old, she is one of the most prominent “senior” models in the world. Having become a L’Oréal muse, she also proved to be one of her son’s greatest supporters. It must be said that Maye has come a long way.

With her excellent manners and haughty bearing, we can easily imagine Maye Musk studying in the best Swiss boarding schools. This is not the case: born in Canada, she very quickly left her native country to grow up barefoot, in the dust of Pretoria. Maye Haldeman, her maiden name, traveled throughout her childhood, touring Africa, Europe and Arabia in a small propeller plane, with her parents and siblings. His father, Canadian doctor Joshua Haldeman, and his mother, Winnifred, a dance teacher, are free spirits, originals who raise their five children in the cult of independence and resourcefulness. “It was crazy, my father had traded our car for a plane, and when we left, we had no GPS or map! My parents followed their rudimentary navigation instruments, and sometimes they landed in the middle of the street because there was no airport…” she said in an interview with Madame Figaro in 2022 on the occasion of the release of his autobiography Lessons of a Lifetime.

One year, Indiana Jones style, the family goes in search of a mythical archaeological site, a lost city on the border of Namibia and South Africa. The children spend the nights under the stars in the Kalahari desert, coming face to face with wild animals, lions, hyenas, scorpions. Adventure, the real one. Maye Musk: “Where we were going, no one spoke English. My mother told me that we once caught dysentery in India… We were forced to make express landings to go and relieve ourselves in the great outdoors!” In short, listening to him, we understand a little better the personality of a son who wants to take us to Mars in his Starship rocket.

Notoriety late

Today, she has a series of contracts, including that of Dior Beauté ambassador, music videos (for Beyoncé, in 2013) and magazine covers: in May 2022, she was on that of Sports Illustrated (and in a swimsuit, please!). However, Maye has long been a model among others. At 15, she participated in a local competition in South Africa, where she grew up. In 1969, she was barely 20 years old when she finished finalist in the Miss South Africa competition. Modeling then becomes a complementary activity for the woman who is a qualified dietician and nutritionist.

It was only after retirement that Maye Musk became a star among senior models and a celebrity in her own right, assiduously followed on social networks (she has 2 million subscribers on Instagram). Which is enough to make the septuagenarian laugh: “You know, my career took off when I stopped dyeing my hair… It also coincided with a moment when the demand for older models was stronger” , she explained again in 2022 to Madame Figaro. “I never imagined being a model at 74! In my youth, I often had to go through twenty auditions before being chosen, or drive an hour to find myself with hundreds of other candidates, only to return home having been completely ignored. .”

Errol’s violence

But since becoming “Instafamous,” Maye Musk has transformed herself into a “role model” for women around the world, who see her as a symbol of elegance and stubbornness. In his bestseller Lessons of a Lifetimeshe talks about the most difficult moments of her life, especially those with my violent ex-husband: Errol. However, she never pronounces the first name of the man whose surname she has kept. Threats, physical violence, blackmail, Maye took ten years to leave Mr. Musk, the man who gave her three children in three years (Elon, Kimbal and Tosca), and with whom she did not initially want to marry.

It was because her own twin sister, Kaye, was getting married that Maye agreed to marry Errol in 1970. Before bitterly regretting it. Divorced in 1979 after ten years of legal battles, she asked for custody of the children, but found herself without resources. She will never share her personal difficulties with her family: “My brothers and sisters knew nothing, they understood a lot of things from reading the book. I didn’t dare talk about it.” His son Elon helped him with his first entrepreneurial successes. Today, Maye urges women victims of violence to speak out and do like her: save their skin. So much the better, his voice carries. No doubt, also, thanks to the notoriety of his famous son, the richest man on the planet. However, Maye Musk likes to remind us with humor: “I was famous before Elon was!”

Oedipus complex?

Maye and Elon have always been very close. In a poignant passage from her book, she recounts how Elon, then a young boy, came between her and her possessive ex-husband, to protect her from being beaten. At the end of the 1980s, the young man decided to go alone to Canada to study, taking advantage of his mother’s nationality to settle there: “When my son told me that he was moving, I communicated to him a list of all my Canadian family contacts. I sent letters to everyone to let them know he was coming… But they took six weeks to arrive, and he was already there, so he managed!” Maye ended up following him, and settled in Toronto: “I was 42, and I left everything to start again.” She opened her dietetics consulting practice, and continued modeling at the same time.

In the 1990s, she moved to San Francisco to be as close as possible to Elon, who was making a splash in Silicon Valley: “I lived in a small studio with a curtain to separate the bedroom and living room… I was doing my laundry at the Lavomatic across the street. Elon had bought me a convertible sofa, for the times he came to see me. He only used it once…” Their complicity would a priori still be there today. In May 2022, the woman who proudly appeared on the arm of the turbulent tech boss at the big celebrity gathering at the Met Gala in New York was Maye. And no one else.