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AMY GOODMAN: That is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We finish at the moment’s present with Half 2 of my latest interview with the reporter Chris McGreal, who was the Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian over the last years of apartheid by 2002. He’s been carefully following the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised underneath the nation’s racist apartheid legal guidelines. A few of McGreal’s items embrace “What does Elon Musk consider?” and “How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ prolong to apartheid South Africa.” I started by asking Chris McGreal to debate Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman.
CHRIS McGREAL: We see Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. He immigrates to South Africa in 1950. And that’s actually when apartheid has simply began to kick in. The Fifties are when essentially the most — the primary legal guidelines — South Africa had had discriminatory legal guidelines earlier than, however you see the precise apartheid legal guidelines, that are way more aggressive, and in some ways paying homage to the Nazi Nuremberg legal guidelines towards Jews within the Thirties. They’ve very comparable echoes in stripping Black folks from the correct to work in sure locations, their actions, controlling them, confining them to areas. You already had a scenario which has now, you recognize, come to the fore due to latest occasions with Trump, however —
AMY GOODMAN: You imply with Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute?
CHRIS McGREAL: Sure, but additionally with the sanctions over land, is that the 1913 Land Act had already disadvantaged most Black folks of land in South Africa anyway. At that time, the 7%, or 10%, because it was, of the inhabitants that was white owned greater than 85% of the land underneath the Land Act of 1913. So, the apartheid legal guidelines kick in within the Fifties.
Musk was born — Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, and at that time the prime minister was a man known as John Vorster. And John Vorster’s background could be very telling, actually, as a result of Vorster, within the Thirties, had been a member of a neo-Nazi militia known as the OB, which was brazenly sympathetic and linked to the Nazis in Germany. It was liable for every kind of assaults, however together with burning Jews out of their companies in Johannesburg.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re speaking about what years?
CHRIS McGREAL: Within the Thirties, so the late Thirties. After which South Africa goes to warfare as an ally of Britain towards Hitler. The OB and the teams that assist them, like Vorster, folks like Vorster, they actively oppose that. They really are in contact with — OB is in contact with German navy intelligence, and so they plan to assassinate the prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, and overthrow the federal government and have it assist Hitler. That plan fails, as a result of the Germans are unable to supply the required weapons and again out.
However in 1942, John Vorster, later prime minister, stands up and provides a speech, and he talks in regards to the system that they — their type of ideological perception system, which was Christian nationalism. And he says Christian nationalism in South Africa is similar as Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy. It’s all anti-democratic. It’s all the identical factor. By 1971, when Elon Musk is born, that man is the prime minister of South Africa. And Christian nationalism is the idea of not solely the political philosophy, however the complete schooling system that Elon Musk is introduced up into.
AMY GOODMAN: So, take us from Elon Musk’s grandfather transferring to South Africa within the ’50s to his father, how they gained their wealth.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Musk — Elon Musk’s grandfather strikes there in Fifties. He’s not significantly affluent. He arrives with out some huge cash. However it’s Elon Musk’s father, Errol, who makes the true cash, principally by investments in emerald mines in Zambia. And, you recognize, mining situations in southern Africa in that interval have been actually fairly dire within the Sixties and ’70s, very excessive loss of life fee, very poor situations. However the house owners obtained very wealthy.
And Musk lived what can solely be described as a neocolonial life. In case you have been a white South African in that interval and also you had any cash in any respect, you lived with servants at your beck and name. You lived in sprawling housing. And what you see with Errol Musk is that after we get a glimpse into simply how a lot cash he had, when he and Elon’s mom get divorced, she says on the time that, nicely, he owns a yacht, he owns a jet, he owns a number of homes. So there was appreciable wealth there.
AMY GOODMAN: Was the grandfather of Elon Musk on the file in his assist for Vorster?
CHRIS McGREAL: Properly, he was actually on the file in his assist for apartheid, very vividly so, sure. And he stated that that’s why he had moved to South Africa from Canada in 1940, was in assist of it. Now, the grandfather himself is killed a couple of years later in a airplane crash, nevertheless it’s not identified what Elon Musk’s grandmother’s private views of Vorster significantly have been, however they have been each avid supporters of the apartheid system, and the grandmother lived for quite a lot of years afterwards.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’ve been speaking about Elon Musk’s maternal grandparents and the way they moved to South Africa, however discuss their roots in Canada.
CHRIS McGREAL: Initially, the grandparents don’t have any connection to South Africa. They’re born and grew up in Canada. And within the Thirties, the grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, he’s head of the Canadian department of a U.S. motion known as Technocracy Included. And Technocracy Included is actually a motion to overthrow democratic governments in the US and have technocrats, however large businessmen, in some ways, are available and run the nation. That’s partly a response to FDR’s election and New Deal and large reforms that he’s launched in the US.
AMY GOODMAN: So, from Canada, they might assist to launch a coup towards FDR?
CHRIS McGREAL: No. Canada had its personal department of this motion to overthrow the federal government in Canada. He, Haldeman, heads that department. And thru the Thirties, it takes on more and more fascist overtones. They begin carrying grey uniforms modeled on the Nazi brown and black shirts. And so, when Canada declares warfare on Germany in 1939 alongside Britain, the motion is banned, as a result of it’s clearly sympathetic to Hitler. Then Haldeman is arrested.
AMY GOODMAN: Elon Musk’s grandfather.
CHRIS McGREAL: Elon Musk’s grandfather is arrested. They discover paperwork sympathetic to the Nazis and different subversive paperwork inside his home. And he’s despatched to jail for a couple of months, then stays on basically a subversion watch record for the remainder of the warfare right here. So, he’s mainly thought to be a Nazi sympathizer, a fellow traveler.
AMY GOODMAN: And a few decade later, he strikes to South Africa. Why?
CHRIS McGREAL: So, after the warfare, he founds one other political motion, which has deep antisemitic roots and really promotes the forgery, The Protocols of the —
AMY GOODMAN: Elders of Zion?
CHRIS McGREAL: Elders of Zion, that’s it. However, clearly, after the warfare and the Holocaust, there’s no actual urge for food for that in Canada. It’s a failing political motion. And so, his eye casts right down to South Africa. By 1950, the apartheid authorities has been in energy for 2 years. And Haldeman appears to be like at it and thinks, “That’s simply my type of place,” which clearly that was what he would need to create in Canada and had been making an attempt to create within the Thirties. And so, that’s the purpose at which he and his spouse Maye, they transfer to South Africa and change into very fervent supporters of apartheid.
AMY GOODMAN: I needed to mix in some breaking information, along with chopping off all assist to South Africa, information of the area. And that’s, Sam Nujoma, the liberty fighter turned president, who led Namibia to independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, has died on the age of 95, sometimes called Namibia’s founding father, identified for his motto, “A united folks, striving to realize a typical good for all members of the society, will at all times emerge victorious.” What was known as South West Africa grew to become the unbiased Namibia. Discuss Sam Nujoma and the way that matches into this image of South Africa by apartheid.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Sam Nujoma was the pinnacle of the South West Africa Folks’s Group, which was the liberation motion of Namibia.
AMY GOODMAN: SWAPO.
CHRIS McGREAL: SWAPO, certainly. Actually, SWAPO takes off and has — is ready to have impact after Angola turns into unbiased with the autumn of the Portuguese dictatorship. The Portuguese colonizers depart Angola, and Angola supplies a base then for SWAPO to actually battle to liberate South West Africa. That turns into referred to as the Border Struggle, euphemistically. The South Africans name it the Border Struggle. They really invade Angola in an try to overthrow the Marxist-leaning authorities of Angola, but additionally to maintain SWAPO at bay. However the warfare goes on, and finally South Africa loses that warfare.
At that interval, although, one of many belongings you see is that Peter Thiel, one other member of the “PayPal mafia,” very shut good friend of Musk, he had been at college in Johannesburg, however his father will get a job on a uranium mine close to Swakopmund in what’s then South West Africa. And so, Peter Thiel strikes there as a baby and goes to highschool there.
And the factor to learn about South West Africa, the explanation it was separate from South Africa is that it had been a German colony till the tip of the First World Struggle. Then it turns into — falls underneath South Africa’s mandate, partly as a result of at that time South Africa was a British colony. When South Africa turns into a republic within the ’60s, it hangs onto South West Africa, and it turns into a South African colony. However the inhabitants, large a part of the inhabitants was of German ancestry. And you might — I keep in mind going to Windhoek within the early ’90s, and the primary thoroughfare by Windhoek was known as Hermann Goering Strasse, named not after the Luftwaffe chief, however after his father, who had been a governor of German South West Africa. In Swakopmund, it was much more excessive. It was infamous for a lot of, a few years, actually into the ’80s and ’90s, as a hotbed of open assist, continued assist for the Nazis and for Hitler. The New York Instances has a narrative from the mid-’70s of a reporter pulling up at a gasoline station to get his automobile crammed with gasoline, and the attendant brazenly giving a Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler” to him. You could possibly go to curio outlets in Swakopmund, and they might promote Nazi-themed mugs and flags and issues, and so they brazenly celebrated Hitler’s birthday each Could. Thiel went to a German college there. So, that’s the ambiance he grows up in.
His father is an official on a uranium mine there. And the fascinating factor in regards to the uranium mine, amongst many different issues, is that it equipped a part of the uranium to develop the South African atomic bombs within the Nineteen Seventies, which have been developed in league with Israel. Now, a part of the cope with Israel was that — is that South Africa would ship yellow cake uranium to Israel. We don’t know the place the yellow cake got here from. It could have come from that Swakopmund-area mine, or it could have come from some other place in South Africa. However South Africa was delivery yellow cake to Israel on the identical time, as a result of it, too, was creating nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: And discuss what Peter Thiel has stated about all this — you recognize, I keep in mind, as we cowl conventions for many years now, Peter Thiel standing up on the first Republican conference that nominated President Trump and supporting him — and who he’s.
CHRIS McGREAL: So, Peter Thiel has stated of his time in Swakopmund, and significantly the varsity, which he describes as significantly a brutal schooling, that it turned him towards authorities and right into a libertarian. And I believe that’s an fascinating factor in all of this, is that one of many issues that isn’t essentially appreciated outdoors of South Africa is that there’s two sorts of whites there. There’s the Afrikaners, who we’ve been speaking about, however there’s a giant English-speaking white inhabitants. And one of many facets of the English-speaking inhabitants was they, on paper, stated they opposed apartheid, however they gained all of its advantages. And most of them, actually not all — there have been some actually heroic people — however most of them did little or no to really finish apartheid.
However one of many merchandise of that’s you will have folks like Musk and Thiel, who’ve executed very nicely and whose dad and mom did very nicely out of the apartheid system, who deny accountability for it. They blame it on the Afrikaners. They blame it on a authorities, excessive authorities, excessive right-wing authorities. However then they’ve to elucidate how it’s that their very own dad and mom have been so in a position to take action nicely out of apartheid, after which they put that right down to particular person expertise, that they’re naturally gifted, and that leads them down this entire libertarian path, anti-government path, as a result of, basically, they’ve to elucidate how they, too, have been advantages of apartheid, with out taking accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: And discuss their relationship, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
CHRIS McGREAL: Properly, they’re co-founders of PayPal collectively. They each, basically, share the identical type of worldview, from what I could make out. They’re, you recognize, libertarians. They’re very against any type of DEI. You’ve seen a deep, deep hostility to DEI. I believe Thiel buys into the identical message about anti-white, the warfare on white folks in South Africa, that South African white teams like AfriForum have been pushing in the US. So I believe, you recognize, philosophically, they’re very comparable, and clearly they’ve a really shut relationship.
AMY GOODMAN: After which discuss David Sacks, and discuss extra particularly about what you’re referring to because the “PayPal mafia.” I don’t suppose most individuals on this nation perceive all of those connections and this uncommon scenario the place these, what, among the wealthiest males on the earth work collectively, based PayPal and now encompass the president of the US.
CHRIS McGREAL: Sure. So, David Sacks was born in Cape City within the ’70s. And he strikes — his dad and mom take him to Tennessee when he is 5 years outdated. So he didn’t develop up in the identical milieu as Musk and Thiel, however he did develop up within the white South African diaspora, for certain. He clearly shares the identical views. You understand, as you say, they’re a part of the PayPal mafia. All of them get wealthy from the creation of this firm. They’re all on the high working it. And now Sacks has emerged as Trump’s AI and crypto czar, once more, a part of the identical undertaking. So, you’ll be able to see this —
AMY GOODMAN: And he was a chief fundraiser for President Trump —
CHRIS McGREAL: A giant one.
AMY GOODMAN: — as you stated, born in Cape City.
CHRIS McGREAL: Sure, a giant. So, they’ve all emerged with, basically, from what I could make out, the identical philosophy. And, after all, that’s solely been bolstered by their success. They’re satisfied, clearly, of their very own genius and value, and that authorities, whether or not it’s South African authorities or, on this case, it appears to be, the U.S. authorities, is an impediment to success.
AMY GOODMAN: And although we talked about it in Half 1, lastly, Roelof Botha, making this little quartet, white males of a sure age collectively, and his historical past, additionally part of the PayPal mafia?
CHRIS McGREAL: Sure, he’s a part of it, and he’s been — he has not emerged as an open supporter of Trump. I’m not solely certain what his private views are on this. However he does have a really fascinating background.
His grandfather was Pik Botha, who was the final overseas minister of apartheid South Africa. And Pik Botha’s job, basically, was to go all over the world, significantly the West, and guarantee them that apartheid was being amended, was being dismantled, when in truth it was in some ways — though what was referred to as petty apartheid, which was the routine discriminations, the segregation, was being dismantled, in truth, the political system was really solely reinforcing it, solidifying it. The federal government of the time cooked up a system of three parliaments that will characterize totally different components of the inhabitants, however — and provides individuals who weren’t — some individuals who weren’t white a vote, however none of these folks have been Black. There was no Black parliament, partly as a result of they have been being pushed into the unbiased homelands. The concept was that they have been now not South African anyway.
So, Pik Botha went round making an attempt to apologize and excuse for this technique. And he was profitable with, you recognize, conservatives. He noticed numerous Reagan and folks. They cherished him right here, and the identical with Thatcher in Britain. They noticed them as the appropriate face of apartheid. And he was so deluded by the tip. He was satisfied. I keep in mind assembly him through the period of the transition to democracy from apartheid. He was so satisfied that he was indispensable to the system that Mandela must appoint him overseas minister, which he duly didn’t.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you say the background of all these males’s households was fleeing Mandela’s South Africa?
CHRIS McGREAL: Properly, they didn’t — a few of them left earlier than. I imply, it’s price noting that Elon Musk left in 1988 on the age of 18, simply as he would have change into eligible to be drafted into the South African military, as all white males have been at that time, which could have led him to battle the Border Struggle that I used to be speaking about in Angola towards SWAPO, or it might need led him into the townships, which at that time have been in full ferment. And, you recognize, you had an enormous quantity of civil unrest in South Africa at that time. The nation had largely change into ungovernable. It was underneath a state of emergency, and the white troops have been making an attempt to maintain some type of order within the Black townships, like Soweto. He left earlier than he needed to do any of that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, very curiously, for individuals who aren’t conscious, Elon Musk had an organization known as X.com. It was an internet financial institution. It merged with Confinity in 2000 to type PayPal. The merged firm was renamed PayPal in 2001. And you’ve got all of those guys who you’ve simply laid out — nicely, I believe Botha is a companion at Sequoia Capital — however now key gamers. And that brings us to Trump’s order on Friday to chop off all assist to South Africa and supply refugee standing in the US to the white South Africans who’re, quote, “victims of unjust racial discrimination.” However, curiously, many within the right-wing white foyer say they need to keep and concentrate on ending Black majority rule. That is Flip Buys, the chairperson of what’s known as the Solidarity union.
FLIP BUYS: We would disagree with the ANC, however we love the nation. As in any group, there are people who want to immigrate, however the repatriation of Afrikaners as refugees will not be an answer for us. We need to construct a future in South Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: So, he’s talking in entrance of an indication that claims “AfriForum.” Put this in context. And what about Afrikaners saying, “No, that is our land. We don’t need to come to the US”?
CHRIS McGREAL: Properly, AfriForum is backpedaling furiously now, as a result of there’s been an enormous backlash in South Africa from individuals who blame it for this case. The truth is, some folks have accused it of treason. However should you have a look at what AfriForum was saying only a decade in the past, and positively in 2018, when folks like Kallie Kriel, who was head of the AfriForum, and others have been coming to the US, they have been claiming there was a white genocide. They have been claiming there was a warfare on white folks in South Africa. They usually have been basically making an attempt to characterize the post-apartheid period of considered one of oppression of Afrikaners, that they have been the true victims of it.
And that is — they’re not alone on this. There had been a phenomenon, ever for the reason that finish of apartheid, of Afrikaners portray themselves as sufferer. There was a track emerged within the Nineties known as “De la Rey,” and it’s very fashionable with Afrikaners. It’s sung in bars and rugby matches. And de la Rey was a well-known common who fought to the bitter finish towards the British within the Boer Struggle, the Second Boer Struggle within the early twentieth century, which the Afrikaners then misplaced. And this track basically is an try to take Afrikaners again to a time after they have been the victims, when it was their girls and youngsters dying within the British focus camp, after they have been the individuals who have been oppressed. And it conjures up this Boer common, who — he could also be dropping the warfare, however he’s going to battle to the final, a bitter ender.
And that is how they’ve been characterizing themselves, a few of them. And AfriForum is a part of that type of try to rewrite historical past and make out that they’re this minority that has lengthy been persecuted, not simply by the post-apartheid period, however by the British, and so they have an extended historical past, and apartheid was only a technique of survival — all they have been making an attempt to do was to maintain themselves and their tradition alive.
It has had one different impact, which they hadn’t anticipated and has alarmed them, is that in all of the orders which were given out canceling assist and agreements, considered one of them impacts agricultural merchandise being imported to the US, which have usually been duty-free as a method of serving to Africa. One result’s that their very own merchandise are now not being imported duty-free into the US. So, these white South African farmers, who’ve been complaining of oppression, will now really be being hit with tariffs or common duties, and so it’s going to price them financially, which is without doubt one of the causes they’re so upset by it and pretending that it was nothing to do with them.
AMY GOODMAN: Guardian reporter Chris McGreal. He was the Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian over the last years of apartheid by 2002.
We did this interview in early February. Over the previous two months, Trump has suspended assist to South Africa, expelled the South African ambassador and supplied refugee standing to white South Africans, claiming South Africa’s discriminating towards the white minority. Trump has additionally simply nominated Leo Brent Bozell to be U.S. ambassador in South Africa. Bozell’s son was sentenced to just about 4 years in jail for his position within the January sixth rebellion, earlier than he was pardoned by President Trump. One be aware on Elon Musk’s household: Maye Musk is Elon’s mom, not his grandmother.
To see Half 1 of our interview with Chris McGreal, you’ll be able to go to democracynow.org. We’ll additionally hyperlink to his items, “What does Elon Musk consider?” and “How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ prolong to apartheid South Africa.”
That does it for our present. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for becoming a member of us.
