You'll get a lot of conflicting information on this topic, depending on who you ask and what axes they have to grind.
But let's cut through the bs and look at what we actually know.
Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, smack dab in the middle of the apartheid era.
His father, Errol Musk, was an electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, and property developer.
Now, there's been claims that Errol Musk owned an emerald mine in Zambia, which supposedly provided the family with vast wealth during apartheid.
Elon himself has vehemently denied these claims, calling them "BS" on Twitter.
He's stated that he arrived in North America with about $2,000, paid his own way through college, and ended up with over $100,000 in student debt.
But, even if the emerald mine story is true (and that's a big if), Zambia wasn't under apartheid rule.
It was an independent country.
So the direct link between apartheid and the Musk family's wealth is tenuous at best.
That said, it's undeniable that being a white family in apartheid-era South Africa came with inherent privileges.
The system was designed to benefit whites at the expense of the black majority.
So, in that sense, you could argue that the Musk family, like all white South Africans at the time, indirectly benefited from the apartheid system.
Trying to pin the sins of apartheid on a kid who was born into that system and left as soon as he could is stretching it.
Elon Musk left South Africa at 17, partly to avoid mandatory military service in the apartheid regime.
The Musk family, like all white South Africans, likely benefited from the structural inequalities of apartheid, but there's no solid evidence of direct profiteering from the system.
Elon Musk's own vast wealth, came much later, through his work in the tech industry, far from the shores of South Africa.
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