Errol Musk, 76, the father of Elon Musk, recently revealed in an interview with The Sun that he fathered a second child with his 35-year-old stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout. He also shared some thoughts about being a prolific father and what it’s like to have kids with younger women. And since his Tesla-founder son, Elon, 51, also recently revealed that he secretly welcomed twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis back in November, people are increasingly curious about the billionaire and his dad. Learn what to know about Elon Musk’s White South African father Errol and his family below.
1. Errol wears many different hats.
According to Elon’s Wikipedia page, his father is a man of many talents. Errol, born in 1945, is (perhaps most tellingly as Elon’s dad) listed as a pilot and electromechanical engineer. But he’s also been known as a consultant, sailor, and property developer, and was a co-owner of an emerald mine in Zambia.
2. He was only married once.
Though Errol apparently fathered children with multiple women, he’s only been married once, to model and dietician Maye Musk, (nee Haldeman) now 74. The couple were married from 1970-1979 and had three children together — Elon, born Jun2 28, 1971, 49-year-old chef and entrepreneur Kimbal Musk, born in 1972, and their only daughter together, 47-year-old filmmaker Tosca Musk, born in 1974.
3. Errol has seven children.
Errol revealed in his July 2022 interview with The Sun that he had two “unplanned” children with his stepdaughter, Jana — a 5-year-old son named Elliot Rush in 2017 and a 3-year-old daughter in 2019. He also reportedly had two daughters with her mother, Heide, whom he was married to for almost two decades — Asha and Alexandra Musk are Elon’s half-sisters, per a separate report in The Sun. With his three children with Maye, Errol has seven children in total across three relationships.
4. He believes strongly in procreation
Like his son Elon, Errol is very open about how he feels about having children. “The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce,” he told The Sun. “If I could have another child I would. I can’t see any reason not to.” He added that the world might be very different if he’d hesitated to have his older children, as well. “If I had thought about it then Elon or Kimbal wouldn’t exist,” he said.
Elon also has similarly welcomed a large brood of ten total children, including the most recently revealed twins with Shivon Zilis in November 2021.
5. He has been accused of violence.
Maye didn’t hold back when telling Harper’s Bazaar about her allegedly toxic relationship with Errol. “Everybody I knew called him ‘the Pig’ because he treated me so badly in public,” the CoverGirl model told the magazine in November 2019. “And I was too scared to tell anyone [about the deeper violence]. Like every abused woman, I was embarrassed, and I knew I had made a mistake, you know? He told me over and over that I was stupid, ugly, boring. He was very rich, but he made sure I had nothing.”