Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Inc. and current owner of Twitter, gave his followers a glimpse into his past on Saturday by telling a story from his youth in an effort to refute claims made by the liberal media that he comes from a privileged background and to discredit his success.
Musk tweeted his response to a post that falsely claimed he was from “a wealthy family but had financial difficulties”.
Musk claimed he did not have a good childhood due to a lack of financial support.
The Street has more details about Musk’s background:
Born in South Africa, his story is basically that of a self-made billionaire, who left his birthplace at the age of 17 to follow his mother to Canada. He immigrated to the United States to pursue his college studies in prestigious universities. The entrepreneurial spirit that he had from a very young age was nourished by his curiosity and his experiences, which led him to co-found successful companies. The problem is that this version is regularly contested by press articles or posts on social networks, indicating that he comes from a privileged background, which was an important springboard to become who he is today.
One assertion has been circulating: His family owned an emerald mine in Africa. Musk has said more than once that this is false, but it keeps coming back and clearly annoys him. Last month, he offered a $1 million in cryptocurrency Dogecoin to anyone who can prove it.
The problem is that the belief about Musk growing in affluence was spread by his estranged father, Errol, during two interviews with Business Insider South Africa in February 2018.
In these interviews, Errol Musk asserts, without evidence, that he once held a half share in an emerald mine in Zambia. He tells an unverified anecdote that, at age 16, Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal sold two emeralds from the mine to Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York for $2,000.
But in 2020, Errol seems to have regretted his 2018 remarks and said in a Facebook post that Elon did not owe him his success. Rather, he said, Elon did it all on his own.
“My very limited involvement in a business transaction in Zambia in the 1980’s had nothing to do with South Africa and that business can hardly be deemed to be have been inappropriate. Neither was it beneficial to Elon’s success in the USA, starting in about 1999,” he wrote.
But the rumor persists and returns regularly.
On Saturday, Musk, one of the world’s richest men and the most successful African American in history finally broke his silence that he came from a wealthy family.
Read below:
I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation, but did not have a happy childhood. Haven’t inherited anything ever from anyone, nor has anyone given me a large financial gift.
My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.
That said, he does deserve credit for teaching me the fundamentals of physics, engineering and construction, which is more valuable than money, but did not support me financially after high school in any meaningful way.
Our condition of providing him financial support was that he not engage in bad behavior. Unfortunately, he nonetheless did. There are young children involved, so we continued to provide financial support for their well-being.
Regarding the so-called “emerald mine”, there is no objective evidence whatsoever that this mine ever existed. He told me that he owned a share in a mine in Zambia, and I believed him for a while, but nobody has ever seen the mine, nor are there any records of its existence.
If this mine was real, he would not require financial support from my brother and me.
I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation, but did not have a happy childhood. Haven’t inherited anything ever from anyone, nor has anyone given me a large financial gift.
My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2023
Someone on Twitter said Musk doesn’t need to defend himself because doing so will simply bring up painful memories, which Musk agreed.
Yeah 😔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2023