Elon Musk reportedly ‘creeped out and was furious’ after his father Errol Musk, had a child with his (Errol) stepdaughter who was 40 years younger than him.
This was revealed in the biography of the Tesla founder.
Any chance of Musk repairing his relationship with Errol disappeared when he learned that Jana Bezuidenhout had given birth to baby boy Elliot Rush in 2016, claims Walter Isaacson in his book ‘Elon Musk’.
Jana was 30 at the time but when she was 15, Musk was already concerned that his father was becoming ‘uncomfortably attentive’ to her.
The book portrays Errol as a manipulative and abusive husband and father who once ‘lunged’ at Musk’s mother Maye because another man made a pass at her.
On the night of their honeymoon in Southern France, Errol enraged Maye by buying copies of Playboy magazine and reading them on the bed, Isaacson claims.
Growing up in South Africa, Musk claims that his father guilt-tripped him into leaving his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca to keep him company.
Musk calls his father a ‘volatile fabulist’ who had a Jekyll and Hyde personality.
As Musk puts it, ‘It was mental torture. He sure knew how to make anything terrible.’
After Musk was left in hospital after a beating by some children at his school, Errol sided with the kid who pummeled Musk’s face.
Errol supposedly said, ‘That boy had just lost his father to suicide and Elon called him stupid. How could I possibly blame that child?’
After getting home from the hospital Musk had to stand for an hour while his father screamed at him he was an ‘idiot’ and ‘worthless.’
Errol, an engineer who claimed to have had a stake in an emerald mine, had a relationship with Musk’s mother that was ‘filled with drama.’
He repeatedly proposed but she ‘didn’t trust him’ and then found out he was cheating on her. When she found out she cried for a week and didn’t eat, causing her to lose 10 pounds in weight, Isaacson claims.
Errol ‘promised he would change his ways’ and she agreed to get married but the night of their wedding Maye, a model, got a shock.
They had flown to Southern France for their honeymoon where Errol ‘bought copies of Playboy, which was banned in South Africa, and lay on the small hotel bed looking at them, much to Maye’s annoyance.’
Back in Pretoria, their fights turned ‘bitter’ and she thought about leaving but she was already pregnant.
Maye says, ‘It was clear marrying him had been a mistake but now it was impossible to undo.’
Musk was born on June 28, 1971, and his parents considered calling him ‘Nice’ after the French town where he was conceived, meaning his name would have been ‘Nice Musk’.
Errol and Maye split after an ugly incident at an Oktoberfest party when another guy whistled at Maye and called her sexy.
Errol was ‘furious’ but instead of attacking the man, he ‘lunged’ at Maye and was ‘about to hit her’ when a friend restrained him, Isaacson claims.
Maye later said ‘over time he had gotten crazier’ and that Errol ‘would hit me when the kids were around’. Maye alleges that five-year-old Musk would hit his father on the backs of his knees to try to stop him.
In the book, Errol says this is ‘absolute rubbish’ and that he adored Maye and ‘never laid a hand on a woman in my life.’
However, he continued to be verbally abusive to Maye, calling her ‘boring, stupid and ugly.’
Errol later admitted to have screwed up his marriage and said, ‘I had a very pretty wife but there were always prettier, younger girls.’
Musk left South Africa in 1989 aged 17 by which point his father had become ‘possessed by fantasies and conspiracies’, the book claims.
Kimbal, who was also living with Errol, found that he had a ‘split personality’ and would go from charming to screaming ‘evil comments’ for hours.
As Musk moved to Canada and then the U.S., Errol met Heidi Bezuidenhout and married her, later having two children.
In 2002 after the death of Musk’s newborn baby Nevada, his firstborn son, there was a chance for him to heal his rift with Errol.
Musk bought a house in Malibu for Errol and his new family to live in, but the arrangement soon turned sour.
Isaacson writes, ‘Elon was getting concerned that Errol, who was 56, was becoming uncomfortably attentive to one of his stepdaughters, Jana, who was then 15.’
‘Elon became furious at his father for what he perceived to be inappropriate behavior and he developed a deep sympathy for Errol’s stepchildren.’
Musk bought Errol a yacht and moored it 45 minutes away and said Errol could live there and only see his family on weekends.
But Errol rejected it and eventually went back to South Africa, followed soon after by his wife and stepchildren.
Musk did not see his father in person from 2002 to 2016, but then planned a trip to South Africa. By then, he was divorced and having heart problems.
After a dinner with his father, Musk cut the trip short and decided to return home.
Relations between Errol, Musk, and Kimbal were slowly thawing until they found out about the child with Jana.
Kimbal says in the book, ‘I was actually slowly making amends with my father, but then he had a child with Jana and I said: ‘You’re done, you’re out. I never want to speak to you again.’ And I haven’t spoken to him since’.
Errol claimed at the time they were ‘lonely, lost people’ and that ‘one thing led to another – you can call it God’s plan or nature’s plan’.
Soon after, Musk told Rolling Stone that his father was ‘evil,’ adding, ‘Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.’
On Father’s Day in 2022, Errol told Musk via email he had had a second child with Jana.
Errol, who by this point had seven children, wrote, ‘The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce. If I could have another child I would. I can’t see any reason not to.’
In the email, Errol went on a rant and called Joe Biden a ‘freak, criminal and pedophile President,’ and in South Africa, with no whites around the ‘blacks will go back to the trees.’
He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the ‘only world leader talking’ and included a graphic of a stadium scoreboard which read: ‘TRUMP WON – F*** Joe Biden.’
The parallels between Musk and his father were not hard to miss, not least when it comes to reproducing.
Musk now has 10 children by three different women and, according to his first wife Justine, shares some of the moods which his father is prone to.
Justine, who is mother to five of Musk’s children, says in the book, ‘If your father is always calling you a moron and idiot, maybe the only response is to turn off anything inside that would have opened up an emotional dimension he didn’t have the tools to deal with.’
‘He learned to shut down fear. If you turn off fear maybe you have to turn off other things, like joy or empathy.’
According to Isaacson, sometimes Justine warned Musk he was ‘turning into your father.’
She says, ‘It was our code phrase to warn him that he was going into the realm of darkness.’
