Replies to post #495365 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

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[...] He says the mine made him extremely wealthy


GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP

In an interview with Business Insider South Africa, Errol admitted that, at one point, he literally made more money than he could physically handle.

"We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe," Errol said, explaining that one person would hold the money down while a second would slam the safe door shut. "And then there'd still be all these notes sticking out and we'd sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets."

Errol also shared how his sons got involved in the family business and recalled a time when Elon and his brother Kimbal sold a few of the emeralds from his mine to Tiffany & Co. in New York City.

"They just walked into Tiffany's and said, 'Do you want to buy some emeralds?' " he told the outlet.

Elon refuted reports that his father invested in his first company

In the biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, author Ashlee Vance wrote that Errol invested $28,000 in Elon and Kimbal's then-fledgling company, Zip2.

However, that — as well as Errol's claim of owning half of an emerald mine — is in stark contrast to what Elon has said about his father's wealth. "He didn't own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt," Elon tweeted in December 2019.

Elon also denied that Errol invested in the company. "One thing he claims is he gave us a whole bunch of money to start, my brother and I, to start up our first company. This is not true," Elon told Rolling Stone in 2017. "My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley."

Elon credits him for his own engineering skills

Elon has said one of the reasons he is so skilled at engineering is because of his father. "I'm naturally good at engineering that's because I inherited it from my father," he told Rolling Stone. "What's very difficult for others is easy for me. For a while, I thought things were so obvious that everyone must know this."

He claims he was acquitted of manslaughter charges after killing 3 home invaders

In 2017, Errol told Rolling Stone that while he has never intentionally hurt or threatened anyone, he once shot and killed a group of burglars at his home in Johannesburg, though he says he was cleared of all charges because he acted in self-defense.

In an interview with The Sun, Errol recalled the attack, claiming that he was confronted by a group of seven men inside his home and shot back at the intruders after they opened fire.

He was previously a politician


Cyrus McCrimmon

In 1972, Errol was elected to the Pretoria City Council in his native South Africa. He told The New York Times that as a member of the Progressive Party, he opposed apartheid. Errol also added that his children were keenly aware of the country's government-sanctioned racial segregation. "They were confronted by it every day," he said. "They didn't like it."

However, Errol also told the outlet that life in apartheid South Africa was ultimately "better" and "safer" than it is today.

He blames himself for his divorce from Maye Musk


Kevin Mazur/MG22/Getty

In his interview with Business Insider South Africa, Errol said that he was to blame for his divorce from model Maye Musk, with whom he shares Elon, Kimbal and Tosca.

"I screwed up the marriage, I was totally responsible. It didn't work out too well in the end," he said. "My [former] wife doesn't speak to me, even when we're together, she won't speak to me, so we haven't spoken to one other for 37 years. She won't speak to me or engage me if we're in the same room — which we have been often."

Errol admitted to having affairs, but his ex-wife, now a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, said the problems in their marriage extended beyond infidelity, alleging that Errol was abusive.

"Everybody I knew called him 'the Pig' because he treated me so badly in public. And I was too scared to tell anyone [about his violence]," Maye told Harper's Bazaar in 2019. "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."

She added, "He was very rich, but he made sure I had nothing. Once the kids were living with me, they visited their father some weekends. He would throw out everything they arrived with, so I had to buy them all new clothes and school things. Then he'd sue me and say that I was unfit to parent."

He fathered two children with his stepdaughter

With link, paywall and not - https://people.com/human-interest/who-is-errol-musk-elon-musk-father/