FT lunches with Errol Musk: “I'm Elon's father, not his pal'

Over a near four-hour lunch in Langebaan, Errol Musk gives the Financial Times' Africa Editor David Pilling an unfiltered tour of his worldview — and his often-estranged relationship with the world's richest man, his son Elon. The 80-year-old former emerald dealer defends a harsh Pretoria upbringing, denies abuse allegations levelled against him, and lavishes praise on Vladimir Putin's Russia and Britain's Tommy Robinson, whose legal fees Elon later covered. He weighs in on apartheid, Marine Le Pen, Keir Starmer and Elon's public clash with The Economist's editor. Father and son, once at odds, are talking again — and still sign off "I love you.".By David Pilling.The flames licking at me from the restaurant fire suggest Mr Hyde but the tall, avuncular figure who grips my hand and flashes a pearly white smile says Dr Jekyll. It was Elon Musk who told his biographer Walter Isaacson that his father had a Jekyll-and-Hyde nature, though Errol tells me the book is “very, very poor” and full of errors.Elon also said of his father in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone magazine: “Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.” That followed his discovery that Errol had fathered a child with his own stepdaughter, a woman some 40 years his junior.Yet when Errol enters the restaurant in Langebaan, on South Africa’s windswept west coast, he has a mesmerising presence. He’s courteous and fixes me with his blue eyes. We move tables because, as he helpfully points out, it will be too noisy as well as too hot.“This is a very nice restaurant,” he says — adding, when I ask: “I’ve been to this town with Elon but not to this restaurant.”Throughout our conversation, his long verbal peregrinations, however light or dark, are regularly punctuated by a display of his perfect teeth, illuminating a still handsome if wispily hirsute and deeply grooved 80-year-old face.I had arrived early after a 90-minute drive north from Cape Town and, following a blustery walk on the beach, had approached Pearly’s, the waterfront restaurant where we were to meet. It’s winter in South Africa, and it had seemed like a good idea to sit by the roaring fire; but soon the heat was coming at me in waves. I took my jacket off, put it on again, considered moving table, then gave in to inertia. Rarely had I been so nervous before an interview.Most of what I’d read about Errol was dark. Elon had described a traumatic childhood. Errol’s first wife Maye Haldeman, a beauty queen, said she’d discovered his true nature on their European honeymoon from which she’d returned “bruised and pregnant”. They divorced when Elon was eight, by which time his younger brother Kimbal and his sister Tosca had been born.Recently, Errol has become a champion of both Vladimir Putin and British far-right activist Tommy Robinson. This July, he paid for Robinson — “so polite and self-effacing” — to attend Russia’s anti-Davos. Last year, The New York Times ran a lengthy investigative piece alleging that Errol had been accused of sexually abusing five of his children and stepchildren. The article, citing court records, personal correspondence and interviews with family members, said the allegations dated back to 1993 and that Elon had sometimes taken action to intercede after relatives contacted him for help. Three separate police investigations were opened, according to the NYT, though at least two of those inquiries have ended. Errol, who has never been convicted of any crime, rejects the allegations outright. He also denies ever hitting Maye.I grew up in a very harsh South Africa. Thrashings were part of every dayI had thought, more than once, that I shouldn’t be here. If Errol were not Elon’s father, he’d be an unworthy subject, a one-time emerald dealer with three ex-wives and pungent opinions. But Errol — rocket enthusiast, disciplinarian, fabulist, internet rabbit-hole explorer — is a towering figure in Elon’s life.Some of Elon’s wayward genius, including his early interest in computers and his risk-taking zeal, is traceable to his father, a man whom Elon has called both legitimate businessman and huckster. Although the two have been estranged — not any more, Errol says — their opinions have recently converged on a range of issues, including the alleged merits of the European far right and the supposed dystopia into which the UK has descended as a consequence of immigration.Errol claims they still message each other, both signing off lief vir jou — “I love you” in Afrikaans.In fathering Elon, his first child, Errol literally changed the world. As if to bring that home, just a few hours before we meet and almost 56 years after Errol’s honeymoon, one of Elon’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets crashed into the Moon.There are several fork-drop moments in our near-four-hour conversation. But all my apprehensions aside, the man who strides in is undoubtedly charismatic. “Ah, the famous journalist,” he says. As we slip into a booth, he orders a Castle Lite beer and I a local stout.“We are very fortunate in South Africa; we have very good quality food, and it’s very inexpensive. It’s actually what has enabled all the populations, including the Black population, to grow astronomically,” he says in his actorly timbre. “Now you don’t grow like that unless you have extremely good conditions, good food, good medical treatment and so forth.”I let the implied defence of apartheid slide as there’ll be time later. Besides, Errol suffers from slight deafness, which renders him immune to interruption.“I grew up in a very harsh South Africa. Thrashings were part of every day,” he says, adding that his father Walter’s disciplinary methods were no exception. “It was just a more primitive environment.”The restaurant, despite being on a blindingly white beach, is strangely sombre as if pre-empting our chiaroscuro conversation. There’s a car race on TV and Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” is squeaking out of the speaker. The chef’s specials include crispy pork belly bites, beef short rib pizza and “tubes and tentacles”, which I interpret as calamari.Errol settles on a small sirloin steak with rice and English mustard. I get grilled kingklip and chips with a side salad.I’d read that his mother — who had come to South Africa from Liverpool — had, for a period, left Errol’s father, a cryptographer during the second world war, returning to England with her two sons.MenuPearly’s RestaurantLangebaan 7357, South AfricaSirloin steak R180Grilled kingklip R250Side salad R35Castle Lite beer R35Charlie’s stout on tap R56Sparkling water R19Filter coffee R19Flat white R38Tips & service R100Total R732“He didn’t speak much. He was a bit of a wreck after the war. He’d shake all the time, especially with one hand,” says Errol, taking a tiny sip of beer. “He was not able to keep a job. He was prone to alcoholism.”His mother was persuaded to return from England, bringing Errol and his brother with her, after Walter won £3,500 on a horse. With that money, she bought a house in “the worst possible area” of Pretoria.His mother, who had left school at 14, kept the family going, working as a stitcher at a furrier. “She had strong hands. Elon will tell you she was a major figure in his life, the strongest woman he’s ever known.”Maye, Elon’s mother, had come to South Africa from Canada with her parents in 1950 when she was two. Joshua Haldeman, Maye’s father and Elon’s grandfather, lost his farm in Saskatchewan during the Depression. He became active in the Social Credit movement, which advocated free credit notes in a strange foreshadowing of the basic income that Elon says will be necessary when AI ends most people’s jobs. An antisemite, he was also part of the Technocracy movement which, in another flick to Elon’s future, believed government should be run by technocrats.As a father, Errol was not the mollycoddling type. When Elon was 12, a boy at school beat him savagely, hospitalising him for a week. Errol was unsympathetic. “I’m his father, not his pal,” he tells me.Errol says Elon, on learning that the boy’s father had died by suicide, had called the father “stupid”. He often called adults stupid, Errol says. “Stupid”, I notice, is also a word that Errol peppers around.After the divorce, Elon eventually settled with Errol in Pretoria, something he came to regret.Sipping the malty stout, I ask: why did Elon call you a huckster? “I was described by the Dean of the University [of Witwatersrand] as a phenomenon,” Errol parries, adding that he was programming early IBM computers and drafting complex patents straight out of university.Errol was doing well financially as an engineer and later as an emerald trader. Elon, he says, was driven to school by Rolls-Royce. On the weekends, they’d go to Errol’s farm where Elon and Kimbal rode horses and motorbikes. “Elon was very happy. He had every single thing a boy could want.”In Russia, there’s no crime. There’s no police . . . All the bridges over the Moskva River are covered in flowersElon devoured his father’s encyclopedias. He discovered a book in Errol’s office illustrating futuristic inventions, including a rocket propelled by an ion thruster. He would fire off rockets of his own, using swimming-pool chlorine as fuel. Errol says they had one of the finest houses in Pretoria. “The early ’80s were golden years.”The food arrives. Errol contemplates his medium-rare steak. “Everything is good here,” he beams.Errol has said in recent interviews — some of which he gets paid for — that he never saw signs of oppression during apartheid. You’d have to be wilfully blind, as most white South Africans were, not to notice a system that forcibly removed millions of Black people from their homes, imposed pass laws and forbade interracial marriage. When I challenge him, he says: “I was not in favour of apartheid. We never practised any kind of apartheid at home with our staff.”Friends in America gave Alexandra, Errol’s daughter from his third marriage and Elon’s half-sister, a hard time about her South African heritage. Errol says he told her: “The next time they ask you about apartheid, ask them where the Red Indians are. Tell them you want to see one of their villages. They will not bother you again because they are well aware they disposed of 26mn Indians.”His dodgy rendering of Native Americans aside, he does have a point. We move on to his recent infatuation with Russia, a topic that opens a verbal floodgate.“Russia is amazing. Russia is a secret that is hidden from us,” he says, taking a forkful of rice. He was invited last year to the Forum of the Future in Moscow to discuss topics including traditional family values and population decline. Errol, who has 23 grandchildren, has done his bit to arrest the latter, if less to promote the former.“Moscow is by far the most beautiful capital city in the world,” he says. “They seem to have a genetic advantage. There are no such things as ugly Russian women. Most of them are over the seven mark and many up to nine or 10.”Ignoring his foray into Miss World circa 1960, I ask if it bothers him that Putin is a dictator and a warmonger. “The whole world is authoritarian,” he counters, adding that Russia was justified in invading Ukraine, which — in his telling — attacked Donbas first.“In Russia, there’s no crime. There’s no police . . . All the bridges over the Moskva River are covered in flowers,” he says, a triplet that would make Alexander Pushkin blush. In a rare assessment, he found Putin to be “a very humble kind of guy, no airs or graces”.Now that we’re waist-deep, I reason, it’s better to go o’er. Both Errol and Elon, through X, the social media platform he bought for $44bn in 2022, have used their influence to support Europe’s far right. Last year, ahead of snap elections in Germany, in a live-stream discussion on X with Alice Weidel, leader of the Alternative for Germany, Elon said: “Only AfD can save Germany, end of story.”Both father and son have also expressed support for Marine Le Pen. Errol tells me that the ban she initially received from running in France’s 2027 presidential election, following her conviction in 2025 for embezzling European funds, was proof that Emmanuel Macron was the enemy. “The Death Star is occupied by Macron and his crowd,” he says, referring to the planet-sized weapon in Star Wars, the first film Elon ever saw in a cinema.Why is Errol supporting Tommy Robinson, a man apparently set on fomenting anti-Muslim vigilantism in Britain? I ask whether it was the Musk Foundation that paid for Robinson to fly to Russia as had been reported elsewhere. “No, I paid. It had nothing to do with the Musk Foundation,” he replies, describing the foundation as a “separate thing” that puts money into tech start-ups and that has a strict governance code.So why dip into his own pocket? “I completely agree with him. I think you English are very short-sighted to give away your capital. London has such a marvellous history and now three-quarters of Londoners are from somewhere else.”I say, “Not three-quarters . . . ”“You’ve got to really have a screw loose to do that.”Apparently Robinson — real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — had heard a TV interview in which Errol had pronounced him a future British prime minister. “He called me from his prison cell to say thank you. ‘Thank you, bruvver’,” Errol says in a faux Cockney accent. “Then Elon immediately arranged for all his legal fees to be paid.”I’ve done a lot of ocean trips on yachts . . . If Keir Starmer was on board, I’d push him off. He’s a real bad piece of workBut isn’t Robinson just a thug? “You are the last person I would call a thug,” he says, smiling at me kindly. “But compared to him, you’re a thug. So work that one out.”We order coffee.He’s opining on the decline of Britain, a country he recalls as an idyll. Now, he detects “a general shabbiness, unkempt roadsides, weeds growing out everywhere”, relatives constantly cadging meals. “They’re all so hard up.”The FT will be shelling out for his steak, I promise.“I’ve done a lot of ocean trips on yachts,” he says suddenly. “If Keir Starmer was on board, I’d push him off. He’s a real bad piece of work. He’s gay.”Starmer’s not gay, I hear myself saying of the former prime minister. Flummoxed, I forget to add: and so what if he were?“I’m not opposed to gays,” he anticipates. His objection is to Starmer’s alleged negligence, as director of public prosecutions, during the grooming gang scandal, in which men of mainly Pakistani descent systematically abused young women and girls.“In order to curry favour with Muslims. Anyway, I think we’re going to get into an argument,” he says emolliently.I broach the interview Elon gave last month to Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor of The Economist, in which Elon espoused many of the same causes as his father. What did he think?“Stupid woman. I wanted to give her a facelift.”No, I groan, what did he think of the interview?“She took a high-and-mighty attitude. And with Elon that’s a really big mistake. When she said people loathe you, that really would have hurt Elon, because I know Elon very well, I mean very, very well. He’s a bit childlike — and with young boys you have to be careful what you say.”He’s 55, I splutter.“Yes, but he’s very much like a boy.”Talulah Riley, who married and divorced Elon twice, told Walter Isaacson much the same. “Inside the man, he’s still . . . a child standing in front of his dad.”Errol applauded Elon’s riposte when he told Minton Beddoes that more people loathed her as a representative of the media. “That was brilliant. That went straight through her into her heart, her little purple stud.”.Read more:.Shareholders hand Musk $1 trillion payday - the biggest in corporate history.We are truly down the rabbit hole now and Errol moves on to Anthony Fauci, former chief medical adviser to the US president, who Errol is convinced is going to jail — though I’m spared his views on Jeffrey Epstein (still alive, obviously). Covid was a scam, both harmless and part of a plot to reduce the global population. Of course Michelle Obama is a man, he says, rolling his eyes as if I’m the last person on Earth to cotton on.Throughout, he betrays little anger, certainly none towards me. In fact, he displays what seems like genuine concern that I’ve had a Covid booster — something that he once predicted would lead to sudden death.“You look quite healthy,” he says hopefully.He stands up to go. “I’ve enjoyed this,” he says. “Don’t crucify me.”.© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

FT lunches with Errol Musk: “I'm Elon's father, not his pal'

Related Stories

Ukraine's war aim has shifted from winning to surviving

BN Daybreak: SA migration debates; Hormuz shipping deal; Fed rates; Elon Musk on SpaceX

SpaceX's AI spending spree overshadows a stronger than expected debut earnings report

BizNews Edge: Rand slides on steady rates, Musk's AI warning, shake-up at IDAC, and more...