I’m disturbed that Elon Musk has been given, basically, a free pass regarding his racist apartheid upbringing. I was reminded of this while reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk last night. The main reason I got the book was to find out about how Elon observed and participated in South African apartheid. I don’t recall reading the word apartheid or any mention of Elon’s thoughts about it or how it affected his daily life.
The above picture from the book shows Elon wearing his school uniform. He was born and completely immersed in a white racist culture till he emigrated to Canada the summer of 1989. I’m approximately the same age as Elon and I recall during my youth that South Africa was the international bogeyman. I often saw news stories condemning South Africans, every nation seemed to hate Afrikaaners, and the never-ending drumbeat of “stop the racist evil” was an essential element of the culture I grew up in.
Therefore, I was surprised when I found out in recent years that one of the most powerful people in the world was one of them. “How is that possible?” I thought. Why do people buy cars from someone who was raised in a basically Nazi environment, who has apparently not reckoned with his past because he supports the world’s white supremacist leader (Trump), makes anti-semitic remarks, treats women in a domineering and abusive way, etc. It’s one thing to be a red state politician who sells what his constituents want; however, it’s completely different when you are selling products to an international multi-ethnic population.
I guess a lot of customers don’t know how evil Elon’s culture was. For those folks here is a recounting from Thando Hlomuka:
“From my grandpa's perspective who was tortured and imprisoned for being at the wrong place at the wrong time and being identified as a political activist:
It was like hell on earth
As a black person living under apartheid, you had:
- very limited rights
- You had to deal with a crappy education system
- Severely limited opportunities (you could either be a small time entrepreneur, nurse, teacher, policeman or other general occupations, forget about being a doctor, engineer, etc.)
- You could be killed at anytime and they would label your death as a suicide or in worse case scenario, you could be labelled as a terrorist
- The police would randomly search your house at night
- The were places you couldn't go, benches you couldn't sit on, jobs you were not allowed to take, transportation you weren't allowed to ride on, shops you weren't allowed to step in etc. etc.
- You could be humiliated by the police in front of your family for sport (my grandpa once told me his friend was stopped in his car, told to strip, imitate a monkey and lie down while they Pissed on him, he did all of this while his family was watching from the car)
- You weren't allowed to roam around and do nothing during the day, if the police caught you, you would either go to jail or be forced to find a job and by job you could either be a maid or a garden boy
- You were sometimes beaten for nothing
- You id document could be checked at anytime by the cops if you didn't carry it, you were arrested and beaten
- The police patrolled your area daily with massive artillery and war vehicles
- You could be killed if you were at the wrong place at the wrong time (e,g caught in a crossfire, I wouldn't be alive today. There was a time when my grandma was casually doing her business at the toilet and then some apartheid cop busted in and pointed a rifle at her face, luckily the officer got a call from his superiors and was told to report back)
- Pertaining education, if students or teachers were found with political material (historical, relevant or not), they were detained and tortured, if they were lucky they would get out alive
- If facing trouble from the cops wasn't enough, you had to deal with apartheid era gangsters, certain political activists who would assume you were a spy if you didn't engage in anti-apartheid resistance and the actual spies themselves who were waiting to cash in on your mistake or misfortune…
- When it comes to the torture, you would either be electrocuted, drowned in a bucket, beaten to near death or waterboarded… Think of any worse way to torture someone and they would do that to you if you were suspected of any political activity. Even wearing a t shirt written anc at the time got you a session of torture if you lucky or death.
- Having interracial relationships was illegal, if you were caught sleeping with a white woman, you would get a beating and imprisonment, the lady would get a slap on the wrist. If you were unlucky and that women accused you rape… It was an automatic death penalty.
- Homosexuality was beyond illegal, the cops had the right to kill you on the spot if they found out u were gay, black or white
- If you had a nice house or land, it was taken away from you and you were moved to barren land to build a slum(worse than the favelas), you had a bucket for a toilet and you had to relieve yourself there until the govt came to collect the waste. A slum community had to share one tap
I could go on the whole day, My grandparents are slightly racist, they don't tolerate any nonsense from a white person and I honestly don't blame them… If you lived in their time and faced what they faced. You would want to kill every white person alive.
Simply put, being black under apartheid was like living in the 10 circle of hell. I cannot describe the pain and hardships our grandparents went through… It's a miracle that my grandma manages to smile daily and live her life.”
I don’t know if Elon bribed Isaacson to avoid talking about apartheid or if Isaacson didn't think it was important. As I read his book, I will be writing more about Elon because, as far as I know, he hasn’t apologized or made the life changes necessary to prove he renounced Afrikaner values, which I will hereafter describe as Naziism. The dictionary defines Nazi as, “an evil person who wants to use power to control and harm other people especially because of their race, religion, etc.” Elon has a lot of power, and it’s my mission to educate the world about Elon and let him know that we know about him to prevent him from using his power for evil Nazi purposes.
