A Journey Through Time, Privilege, and Turmoil
Elon Musk—billionaire innovator, tech visionary, and now a towering figure in American politics—has a story that stretches far beyond the glitzy headlines of Tesla, SpaceX, or his newfound role as a key adviser to President Donald Trump. To truly understand the man who’s reshaping the world, we need to rewind the clock to his formative years in apartheid-era South Africa. It’s a tale of privilege amid chaos, of a boy growing up in a fractured nation, and of experiences that would leave an indelible mark on his worldview—one that echoes loudly in his actions today.
Picture this: a sprawling, tree-lined campus in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, where the air hums with the scent of blooming purple jacaranda trees in spring. At the heart of it stands Pretoria Boys High School, a grand red-brick institution with double-winged architecture that feels ripped straight out of a British period drama. Founded in 1901 as a colonial homage to elite English private schools like Harrow—complete with borrowed school songs—it was here, in the 1980s, that a teenage Elon Musk spent his final high school years as a day pupil. Just a stone’s throw away sat his father’s imposing home in Waterkloof, a plush suburb synonymous with wealth and exclusivity. For Musk, this was the bubble he called home—a serene, leafy oasis insulated from the fiery unrest engulfing the nation beyond its borders.
A Nation Divided: Apartheid’s Final Days
South Africa in the 1980s was a powder keg. The brutal apartheid regime, which enshrined racial segregation and white supremacy into law, was crumbling under the weight of its own injustices. By 1984, Black townships across the country erupted in rebellion against decades of oppression. Two years later, in 1986, the white minority government declared a state of emergency, desperately clinging to power as the world watched in horror. Yet, in the segregated enclaves where Musk and his peers lived, life carried on with an almost surreal normalcy. “While the country as a whole was very much in flames and in turmoil, we were blissfully very safe in our little leafy suburbs, going about our very normal life,” recalls Jonathan Stewart, a Pretoria Boys alum who was a year ahead of Musk. It was a stark dichotomy: chaos on one side, privilege on the other.
Pretoria Boys High wasn’t just any school—it was a breeding ground for some of South Africa’s most notable (and notorious) figures. Alongside Musk, its alumni roster boasts Labour politician Peter Hain, Booker Prize-winning novelist Damon Galgut, and even Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympian whose life took a dark turn with a murder conviction. For the wealthy, mostly English-speaking white families who sent their sons there, it offered an education steeped in tradition and a buffer from the nation’s unraveling social fabric. “You had this wealthy set, in relative terms, and everybody else was excluded,” Stewart adds, painting a picture of a world deliberately detached from the struggles of the Black majority.
From Bullying to Brilliance: Musk’s Early Years
Born in Pretoria in 1971, Musk’s childhood wasn’t all smooth sailing. Before landing at Pretoria Boys, he spent his first two high school years at Bryanston High School in Johannesburg’s affluent northern suburbs. A mixed-sex, English-language state school with a mid-century aesthetic, Bryanston was a sports-obsessed institution that mirrored the jock-and-cheerleader culture of American high schools. “It was a little bit like when you think of American society,” says Lesley Burns, a 1984 graduate who overlapped with Musk’s first year. “There were all the jocks and the popular guys in the football team.” Musk, however, wasn’t one of them. A member of the chess team, he was an outsider—and a target. The bullying he endured was relentless, culminating in a brutal incident where he was thrown down a staircase and beaten so badly he ended up in the hospital. It was a scarring experience, one that reportedly prompted his father, Errol Musk, to transfer him and his younger brother, Kimbal, to Pretoria Boys.
There, Musk found a softer landing. “He was a very average personality,” recalls Gideon Fourie, a classmate from computer science classes. “He wasn’t in any way like a super jock, or a super nerd, or a super punk … He had a group of friends.” The school itself was a curious blend of tradition and tentative progressivism. In 1981, it made history as the first government school to admit a Black pupil, thanks to a loophole exploited by then-headmaster Malcolm Armstrong. Armstrong, a figure revered by some alumni, went further—defying authorities by meeting with the banned African National Congress (ANC) in Dakar and preaching democracy and social justice to his students. “He forced boys to think about the country in which we lived and the attitudes we had,” says Gregary Hassenkamp, the school’s current headmaster and a contemporary of Kimbal Musk. For a young Elon, these lessons may have planted seeds of skepticism about authority and governance—ideas that would later bloom in unexpected ways.
A Family Legacy and a Fractured Bond
Musk’s family background adds another layer to the story. His grandfather, a Canadian who moved to South Africa in the 1950s, was drawn to the country’s apartheid system, which aligned with his own anti-democratic leanings. Back in Canada, he’d led a fringe political movement with fascist undertones, advocating for rule by technocratic elites. That ideology may have trickled down, subtly or not, to his grandson. Meanwhile, Musk’s relationship with his father, Errol—a wealthy engineer and property developer—has been a rollercoaster of estrangement and reconciliation. Errol’s claims of a idyllic apartheid past (“no crime, no problems”) clash with the darker family dynamics detailed by Musk’s mother, Maye, and brother, Kimbal, who’ve accused him of emotional and physical abuse—allegations Errol dismisses as “rubbish.”
From South Africa to Global Power
Musk left South Africa in 1989, first for Canada (his mother’s homeland) and then the United States, where he’d build his empire. But the echoes of his youth reverberate in his actions today. On his platform X, he’s decried South Africa’s “openly racist laws,” railing against land reform policies in a nation where whites—7% of the population—still own over 70% of farmland. He’s amplified claims of a “genocide” against white farmers, despite evidence suggesting these killings are driven by financial motives, not racial ones. His stance has fueled a firestorm, culminating in Trump’s recent executive order slashing aid to South Africa and offering asylum to Afrikaners—a move some speculate Musk influenced, given his role in Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).
Musk’s business interests in South Africa add another twist. As he pushes to expand his Starlink satellite network there, he’s clashed with affirmative action laws requiring 30% equity in telecom ventures to go to Black-owned businesses—a policy he calls unfair. Trump’s order could pressure South Africa to bend those rules for the world’s richest man. Meanwhile, his political evolution—from backing Democrats like Obama to embracing Trump and far-right figures like Germany’s AfD—has sparked debate: How much of this stems from his apartheid-era upbringing?
The Enigma of Elon Musk
To what degree did those years in South Africa—a nation of stark contrasts, where privilege shielded him from turmoil—shape the Musk we see today? Was it the bullying that forged his resilience, the liberal whispers of Pretoria Boys that sparked his distrust of democracy, or the insulated wealth that colored his views on race and power? Perhaps it’s all of these, braided together with his grandfather’s technocratic ideals and his father’s nostalgic lens. As Musk’s name graces the donor wall of Pretoria Boys’ new auditorium, his legacy remains as complex as the country he left behind—a puzzle that continues to captivate and confound.
