Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, has been at the centre of significant controversy due to his romantic relationship with his former stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout.
Errol Musk Background and Relationship
Errol Musk married Heide Bezuidenhout in the early 1990s, becoming stepfather to her daughter, Jana, who was just four years old at the time.
This positioned Errol as a stepfather and a parental figure in Jana’s life during her formative years. Errol and Heide had two children together, making them Jana’s half-siblings. This established a familial bond through their shared mother.
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After divorcing Heide in 2004, Errol reconnected with Jana in 2014 during a difficult period in her life.
“She told me ‘If I don’t get help, I’m going to commit suicide’, so then I thought I better go and see her,” Errol said. “So, I drove to where she was and met her, and her legs were like broom handles,” Errol added that he decided to offer to help Jana, who was already a mother to a 7-year-old daughter.
Their relationship turned romantic around 2016, when Jana was 28 and Errol was 69. Errol has publicly stated that he never considered Jana his stepdaughter, as she was raised separately from the Musk family for much of her life.
“We were lonely, lost people. One thing led to another, you can call it God’s plan or nature’s plan,” Errol said.
In 2017, the couple had their first child, and Errol assumed it was her ex-boyfriend’s only to find it later, that it was his.
They had a son named Elliot, followed by a daughter in 2019. However, it was never confirmed that they were married at any point.
Elon Musk & Family Response
Elon Musk has previously branded his father as ‘evil’ and ‘a terrible human being’, describing how difficult his childhood was growing up with Errol, recounting instances of emotional abuse.
While speaking to Rolling Stone, Elon once said, ‘In my experience, there is nothing you can do. Nothing, nothing. I wish. I’ve tried everything. I tried threats, rewards, intellectual arguments, emotional arguments, everything to try to change my father for the better, and he… no way, it just got worse.”
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According to reports, Elon and his first wife, Justine, refused to let Errol see their children after learning about the relationship with the public, largely viewing Elon as a victim of a deeply dysfunctional family dynamic.
Despite Errol’s claims that the wider family has no problem with the situation and that they even spent holidays together, this appears to be more his perspective than a consensus.
Despite the backlash, Errol has remained unapologetic. He has defended the relationship as completely normal and dismissed criticism with statements like, “Show me the rules. There are no rules.”
He has also expressed a belief that reproduction is humanity’s primary purpose, further alienating some of his family members.
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