Elon Musk Secured Apartheid-Era Pass on Black Ownership Laws Ahead of Sour Meeting Between South African President and Trump After Stroking Tensions Between the Two Countries
Taking advantage of tensions he helped stoke between the presidents of South Africa and the U.S., Elon Musk was granted an exception to post-apartheid Black ownership laws in his native country that will allow him to operate his Starlink service.
Bloomberg reports the workaround to what the world’s richest man claimed were “openly racist ownership laws” was given to Musk’s satellite-powered internet provider in hopes of appeasing President Trump, who has claimed the South African regime is committing “genocide” against white people. For Musk, it’s a return on a $291 million investment — money he contributed to Trump’s campaign.
“The deal is that all races should be treated equally and there should be no preference,” Musk said Tuesday in an interview at the Bloomberg Economic Forum. “I am in a situation where I was born in South Africa, but cannot get a license to operate Starlink because I am not Black.”
The “black empowerment laws” require 30 percent Black ownership, in some cases. The change carved out for Musk and Starlink will apply to all information and communication technology companies, including those from China and the Middle East, according to Bloomberg.
“News regarding the Starlink workaround regarding Black-ownership laws for Elon Musk to provide internet services in South Africa have boosted investor optimism regarding a favorable outcome resulting from the upcoming Ramaphosa-Trump meeting,” said Phoenix Kalen, head of emerging-market research at Societe Generale SA.
That optimism, however, was not warranted.
Trump, according to multiple press reports, ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during their televised Oval Office meeting, showing a video compilation of footage he believed supported his claims that Ramaphosa’s government was turning a blind eye, if not endorsing, violence against white Afrikaners. Musk was among those who attended the meeting.
“Those people in many cases are being executed—they happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers,” Trump said.
Musk has contributed to the spread of rumors and narratives associated with the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. While he has not always used the term directly, his public statements, social media activity, and the behavior of his AI chatbot have amplified these claims, despite a lack of credible evidence and widespread debunking by authorities and experts
Ramaphosa acknowledged that violent crime is a problem in his country, adding that Black and white citizens are both targets.
“There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity are not only white people,” Ramaphosa told Trump.
The video showed a far-left politician chanting a song that includes the lyrics “kill the Boer,” which means farmer in Dutch and Afrikaaner. The song should not be taken literally, however, says Julius Malema, leader of an opposition party to the ruling African National Congress, adding it’s one of many battle cries of the anti-apartheid movement that remain a defining feature of the country’s political culture.
The phrase “kill the Boer” is not meant to promote violence against individual farmers. “It was a call to mobilize against an oppressive system,” said Bongani Ngqulunga, who teaches politics at the University of Johannesburg.
He also thumbed through what he said were news articles to underscore his point, saying the country’s white farmers have faced “death, death, death, horrible death.” Trump’s claims of genocide are widely discounted, with much of the “evidence” generated by right-wing memes on baseless claims of MAGA influencers.
Trump has already cut all U.S. assistance to South Africa and welcomed several dozen white South African farmers to the U.S. as refugees, with more expected to follow.
“People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety,” Trump said. “Their land is being confiscated and in many cases they’re being killed.”
Ramaphosa, who said he hoped to use the meeting to set the record straight and salvage his country’s relationship with the United States, pushed back, to no avail.
“We are completely opposed to that,” Ramaphosa said of the behavior alleged by Trump in their exchange. He added, “That is not government policy,” and “Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying.”
“When they take the land, they kill the white farmer,” the president countered.
Trump’s campaign to discredit and debase South Africa’s government fits a pattern with the Trump administration and its followers, who have embraced a cult of white victimhood. A poll conducted last July found that, among 2020 Trump voters, 62 percent said that racism against Black Americans is a problem today, compared with 73 percent who said that racism against white Americans is a problem.
Asked how much of a problem racism currently is, just 19 percent of Trump voters describe racism against Black Americans as a “big problem.” That number doubled when asked whether racism against white Americans constitutes a big problem.
Not surprisingly, MAGA voices celebrated Trump’s attack on the South African leader.
“TRUMP HOLDS SOUTH AFRICA PRESIDENT ACCOUNTABLE!” Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative Turning Point USA and a leading Trump supporter, wrote on Truth Social. “President Trump says to ‘turn down the lights’ and then proceeds to show South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, videos of South African political leaders calling for the death of white South Afrikaners.
“Afterwards, he showed the president video of the crosses that symbolize each white farmer MURDERED in South Africa,” Kirk continued. “God bless President Trump. He’s a president who is actually the LEADER of the Free World.”
Joel Pollak, a senior editor at large with Breitbart, called the meeting “the most important thing to happen to South Africa since the end of apartheid.”
Critics accused the president of embarrassing the country by depending on Musk and other right-wing influencers like Tucker Carlson for his information.
“Donald Trump is a demented, stupid racist who has been psyopped by Elon Musk to believe wholeheartedly in ‘white genocide,” wrote one. “When corrected, he goes off on a rant about his Qatari jet. The President of South Africa, a literal saint: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a plane to give you.’”
Ramaphosa tried hard to change the subject, expressing a willingness to partner with the U.S. on technology-driven solutions to reduce crime.
The South African president’s delegation included golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, a sign of goodwill to the golf-obsessed U.S. president. Ramaphosa even brought Trump a large photobook about South Africa’s golf courses.
At one point, Ramaphosa called on Zingiswa Losi, the president of a group of South African trade unions, who told Trump it is true that South Africa is a “violent nation for a number of reasons.” But she told him it was important to understand that Black men and women in rural areas were also being targeted in heinous crimes.
“The problem in South Africa is not necessarily about race, but it’s about crime,” Losi said. “We are here to say how do we, both nations, work together to reset, to really talk about investment, but also help … to really address the levels of crime we have in our country.”
But relations are expected to remain frosty between the two governments. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking about South Africa, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “When one country is consistently unaligned with the United States on issue after issue after issue after issue, now you become — you have to make conclusions about it.”