The story of Elon’s success being built on an emerald mining empire has been stripped of all nuance.
As Elon Musk increasingly became a lightning rod for political controversy, an anecdote about his father briefly owning a stake in a Zambian emerald mine has transformed into evidence among detractors that his success was ill-gotten.
However, Errol has also said in other interviews that the financial support he provided after Elon left South Africa was limited. After finding a buyer in England, he set off, only to find that his flight plan through Saudi Arabia fell over Eid, increasing the cost of his landing and parking. Errol said it was a cash business, with the deal done on a handshake. There was no paperwork and therefore no way to prove whether he had a stake in the mine one way or the other after all these years.Errol told MyBroadband that the income from the sale of cut emeralds allowed them to live a fairly good life between 1985 and 1994, which he said was South Africa’s most trying time. Elon was 14 in 1985.
However, he said the emerald business took a hit in 1990 when the Russians launched a lab-grown variant at a tenth of the price per carat as mined gems.Some accounts say he was dodging the draft into Apartheid South Africa’s military. That was when he asked if he would prefer to attend university in the United States. Elon left 11 days later.
Vance, who published a book about Elon in 2015, wrote that he stayed with a second cousin in Saskatchewan and worked odd jobs — including at their farm and a lumber mill. Zip2 was an online city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages. They sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million in cash. “When I told my father I was leaving, he said I was going to fail and would be back in three months,” he added.
Whether you believe the father or son’s version of events, Elon’s business ventures were not bankrolled by a vast family fortune.
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