Big lie about why Elon Musk left South Africa

Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, said that it was a lie that Elon left South Africa to avoid apartheid military conscription.

Instead, he told Conversations with Lelethu, Elon Musk left South Africa for Canada because he was concerned about the country’s future, and he envisioned his future in the United States.

Musk was born in Pretoria in June 1971. His father, Errol, was an electromechanical engineer, and his mother was a model.

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School, where he was badly bullied.

In one incident, Elon was so severely hurt that his father did not recognise him. He had to stay in a hospital in Sandton for two weeks to recover.

After this incident, his parents moved him to Pretoria Boys High School, where he matriculated with distinctions in physical science and computer science.

Musk maintained ties with his old high school, and former Pretoria Boys High headmaster Bill Schroder said he donated to the school on several occasions.

At age 17, Musk took a computer aptitude test at the University of Pretoria. His results were so extraordinarily high that the university had to retest him.

JLM Wiechers, Director of Information Management at the University of Pretoria, confirmed these high marks.

He said that Musk’s results were outstanding. “Elon Musk received an A+ for both computer programming and computer operating,” he said.

Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria (UP) in 1989 for about 5 months while he waited for his Canadian passport.

Most reports showed that he applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother to avoid South Africa’s mandatory military service.

The government forced young white men to serve in the military for at least a year, either before or after their studies.

The real reason Elon Musk left South Africa

Elon Musk’s father disputed that he left South Africa to avoid mandatory military service under the apartheid government.

Errol Musk said this may have been reported in some articles. However, it does not give the true reason why Elon left South Africa.

“He could have used that story, or somebody else may have used that story for Elon leaving South Africa,” he said.

“However, it is nonsense. It had nothing to do with that [avoiding mandatory military service]. It had nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

He explained that, at the time, many people were concerned about what would happen to South Africa under a black government.

“People were frightened about the future of South Africa at that time, especially around the state of emergencies in the 1980s,” he said.

“They were very afraid of a black government. It is no use pretending. People were terrified of what a black government would mean.”

“So yes, we were very concerned that South Africa would turn into what it did, to a large extent. A great pillaging of the state by a small group of black people.”

In previous interviews, Errol Musk explained that Elon had dreams of being part of Silicon Valley in the United States.

He said that Elon’s decision to leave South Africa had more to do with his pursuit of American ideals than a noble political stance.

Errol also described Elon leaving South Africa as an act of youthful rebellion against his father’s authority.

Elon Musk becomes the world’s most successful entrepreneur

After Musk moved to Canada, he attended Queen’s University in Ontario. He later moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he got degrees in physics and economics.

After graduating, he enrolled at Stanford University in California but dropped out early to pursue business interests.

He created his first business, an online publishing platform called Zip2, in 1995 and sold it in 1999 for over $300 million.

He then reinvested these funds to start X.com, an online payment system. He merged X.com with what would eventually become PayPal.

PayPal grew into an e-commerce giant that was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. It made Elon Musk very wealthy, but it was only the start.

His next project was SpaceX in 2002, and he then became an early investor in Tesla in 2003 before taking over as CEO. Tesla went public in 2010.

He was also involved in SolarCity, a provider of solar power systems, which went public in 2012 and was acquired by Tesla in 2016.

Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time in January 2021, a year after Tesla became the most valuable carmaker in July 2020.

In 2022, Musk also agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Despite Musk’s attempts to walk away from the deal, he eventually purchased the social media site in October 2022.

In June 2026, SpaceX completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, an event that made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

Before the IPO, Musk’s net worth was hovering around $800 billion. The public market’s valuation of SpaceX pushed him past the one-trillion-dollar mark.