Elon Musk’s South Africa: Growing Up White Under Apartheid
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in June 1971 and left in 1989, at seventeen. That means his entire childhood was spent inside apartheid, in the group the system was built to benefit.
He has said he left in part to avoid conscription, because he did not want to spend two years suppressing Black people. His father has said publicly that this account is nonsense. Both statements are on the record, and this page sets out the documented facts alongside the places where the family’s accounts diverge.
The documented facts
Elon Reeve Musk was born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, then the administrative capital of an apartheid state, to Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, and Maye Musk, a Canadian-born model and dietitian from Saskatchewan. His brother Kimbal was born in 1972 and his sister Tosca in 1974.
He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and then Bryanston High School, where he was severely bullied. In one incident he was injured badly enough that his father did not recognise him, and he spent two weeks in hospital in Sandton. His parents subsequently moved him to Pretoria Boys High School, where he matriculated with distinctions in physical science and computer science. He has since donated to that school on several occasions, according to its former headmaster Bill Schroder.
What that childhood meant materially
Apartheid was not a background condition to Musk’s upbringing; it was the organising structure of the society he grew up in, and it allocated benefit by race. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal, who reported from South Africa for years, described the position of a white family with money in that period:
Chris McGreal“Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life.”
McGreal’s point is a general one about the white middle class of that era rather than a specific allegation about the Musk household: if you were white in South Africa then and had any money at all, you lived with domestic servants available to you. That is a description of a system, not a charge against a child.
Leaving, 1989: his account
Musk left South Africa in 1989 at seventeen, travelling to Canada on citizenship claimed through his mother. He has given his reason directly, in a 2013 interview with the actor Rainn Wilson:
Rainn Wilson“You grew up in South Africa… You were in the army there?”
Elon Musk“No. I left at 17. Well, in part, in order to avoid conscription in the army.”
Rainn Wilson“Oh, you left so you didn’t have to deal with the army.”
Elon Musk“You know, spending two years suppressing Black people doesn’t seem to be a great use of time.”
The conscription regime he was describing was real and specific. From 1967 South Africa required all white men over sixteen to complete nine months of military service. In 1977 that was extended to two years, plus thirty days annually for eight years, with deferments available to those completing school or university. Conscription was abolished in the 1990s with the end of apartheid and the creation of an integrated military.
Musk did not serve. Before leaving he spent roughly five months at the University of Pretoria in 1989 while his Canadian documentation was processed — a period he has characterised as something to do while waiting, and which functioned as a deferment. Ashlee Vance, his biographer, reported that Musk had been coasting through study to avoid the army before dropping out.
Snopes examined the “draft dodger” characterisation in March 2025, after criticism of Musk over cuts to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and rated as true the claim that he left in part to avoid compulsory military service.
Leaving, 1989: his father’s account
In interviews in 2026, Errol Musk publicly rejected the conscription explanation. He said the story may have been attached to his son’s departure by others, that it was nonsense, and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with it. His alternative account is that the family, like many white South Africans at the time, was frightened about the country’s direction:
Errol Musk“They were very afraid of a black government. It is no use pretending.”
He linked this to the states of emergency of the 1980s, and said his son’s longer-term ambition was always to reach the United States.
The grandfather: Joshua Haldeman
Joshua Norman Haldeman, Musk’s maternal grandfather, was born in Pequot Lakes, Minnesota in 1902 and raised in Saskatchewan. He trained as a chiropractor and built a large practice in Regina. He moved his family from Canada to South Africa in 1950 — two years after the National Party came to power and began enacting apartheid legislation. He was a pilot from 1948 and died in a plane crash in 1974, three years after Musk was born.
What is documented about his politics is substantial:
- He led the Canadian branch of Technocracy Incorporated, a movement advocating that government be run by engineers and businessmen rather than elected politicians. The Canadian branch was banned after Canada declared war on Germany in 1939, and Haldeman was arrested by the RCMP in 1940 as a director of what was then an illegal organisation. He paid a fine and was released.
- He was subsequently a figure in the Social Credit movement in Saskatchewan, chairing a 1944 Toronto meeting addressed by the Alberta premier Ernest Manning, and later ran for office against future prime minister John Diefenbaker.
- He wrote a book defending South Africa’s system of apartheid.
- The Harvard historian Jill Lepore located his political writings, produced in Pretoria in 1960 and 1962, in an archive in 2023. She has characterised him as a pro-apartheid antisemitic conspiracy theorist who attributed much of what troubled him to Jewish financiers. Joshua Benton, writing in The Atlantic in September 2023, described him in similar terms — as a radical conspiracy theorist holding racist, antisemitic and antidemocratic views. Both accounts rest on Haldeman’s own published writing.
Why he emigrated is disputed by the family
| Account | Explanation given |
|---|---|
| Maye Musk memoir, “A Woman Makes A Plan” |
Her parents met missionaries who had been to South Africa and described how beautiful it was. |
| Scott Haldeman Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association |
Joshua gave several reasons; the primary one was likely his adventurous spirit and a wish for a more pleasant climate in which to raise his family. |
| Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk |
Haldeman had come to believe the Canadian government was taking too much control over individual lives and that the country had gone soft, and so chose South Africa — which was still under white apartheid rule. |
| Lepore, Benton, McGreal journalism and archival research |
Ideological alignment: that he moved to a state whose racial order matched his published political views. |
| Sources 02, 05, 06, 07. Note that Isaacson’s account and the archival researchers’ account are not mutually exclusive. | |
What is not established
There is no evidence that Joshua Haldeman or his wife were members of the Nazi party. That claim circulated widely on social media in January 2025 and was examined by Snopes, which found no direct evidence for it. Technocracy Incorporated was banned in Canada as an organisation opposed to the war, and adopted uniforms and salutes with fascist styling, but that is not party membership and this site does not report it as such.
The motive for the 1950 emigration is not conclusively established. Snopes also found no conclusive evidence for the claim that Haldeman moved to South Africa specifically because he supported apartheid, as distinct from the documented fact that he came to defend it in print once there.
Outstanding on this page
Sources differ on Musk’s city of birth: the overwhelming majority record Pretoria, while at least one account of his family history gives Johannesburg. We have recorded Pretoria as the majority position and noted the discrepancy rather than silently choosing.
The 2013 Rainn Wilson interview should be linked to the recording itself rather than to a transcript in a fact-check. Haldeman’s own writings, held in archive, should be cited directly where they can be obtained. Errol Musk’s 2026 interview should be cited to the recording.
Sources
- Yes, Musk left South Africa in part to avoid compulsory military serviceSnopes · March 2025 · contains the 2013 interview transcript
- No proof Elon Musk’s grandparents belonged to Nazi partySnopes · 29 January 2025
- Before the trillions: why Elon Musk walked away from South AfricaBusiness Day · 18 June 2026 · Errol Musk interview
- Big lie about why Elon Musk left South AfricaNewsday · 17 June 2026 · Errol Musk interview
- Elon Musk’s family history in South Africa reveals ties to apartheidDemocracy Now! · 27 March 2025 · Chris McGreal interview
- The Canadian roots of Elon Musk’s conspiracist grandpaCBC · Haldeman’s Canadian political career
- The prehistory of Technocracy and Elon’s grandpaThe Brooklyn Rail · May 2025 · cites Benton, The Atlantic
- Haldeman, Technocracy and Social Credit in 1940s CanadaStanding the Gaff · contemporaneous Toronto Star record, 1944
- Joshua N. HaldemanWikipedia · used for locating sources only, not relied on for claims
This article follows the standards set out in How This Site Sources Its Claims. If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate, please use our corrections policy and right of reply. Corrections are published, dated and logged.