Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 1 – "Escape from Pretoria"

Host: Jacob Silverman
Date: October 13, 2025
Podcast: Front Burner (CBC) / Understood series

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Overview

The first episode of "The Making of Musk," hosted by Jacob Silverman, explores Elon Musk’s formative years in apartheid-era South Africa. Through interviews with people from Musk’s youth and expert commentators, the episode asks how the country’s racially segregated and privileged social order might have shaped Musk’s personality, worldview, and current political trajectory. The episode also lays the foundation for the series’ broader investigation into Musk’s family history, his escape from conscription, and the lingering influence of South African society on the world’s most polarizing billionaire.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Recent U.S.-South Africa Political Tension (02:10–07:17)

• A dramatized Oval Office meeting unfolds: President Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa) is confronted by then-President Donald Trump about alleged "white genocide" in South Africa, based on right-wing conspiracy theories.
• Elon Musk is present but uncharacteristically silent, as the conspiracy is presented.
• Musk’s rising influence in U.S. politics is noted, with his advocacy for right-wing politics and support for Trump, extending far beyond his tech interests.
• Quote: "Musk was supposed to be someone who thought on the grandest of scales... but here, quietly lurking in an awkward Oval Office meeting, Musk was participating in a petty stunt." (09:11)

2. Musk’s Childhood in Apartheid South Africa (12:01–19:57)

• Rudolph Pienaar, a childhood peer, shares memories of playing computer games at Musk's house. Musk always named his characters after himself: "Elon the Most Strong," "Elon the Most Intelligent," etc.
  • Quote: "For every single character, it was some superlative Elon the most something. If you were to read the narrative... it would read like a story of Elon does something amazing and great." (13:37 – Pienaar)
• Musk attended Pretoria Boys High, an elite, privileged, and predominantly white school, emblematic of apartheid’s cocoon of privilege:
  • "Imagine Hogwarts-ish kind of school sitting in the Pretoria highveld." (16:41 – Pienaar)
  • "As a very typical white South African, you kind of lived a life of entitled or isolated privilege." (17:56 – Pienaar)
• Life for white youths like Musk was materially lavish and sheltered from Black South Africans, who were only seen in servant roles.
  • Will Shoki, journalist: "It was an upbringing that... almost every white South African accessed during apartheid." (18:44)

3. Nature of Apartheid and Its Social Structure (21:23–24:36)

• Strong explanation of apartheid: a system of enforced racial segregation and engineered white dominance, more overt and systematized than, e.g., Jim Crow.
• Underscores the spatial, social, and legal separation between white privilege and Black deprivation. Musk’s world was meticulously insulated from the realities of Black majority oppression.

4. Divisions Among South Africa’s White Population (26:40–28:41)

• Importance of the difference between English-speaking whites (like Musk’s family) and Afrikaner whites.
• This distinction conferred an extra layer of privilege and allowed for moral distancing from the very regime benefitting them.
  • "English speakers enjoyed all of the trappings of apartheid with the morally convenient arguments that they did not create the system." (28:07)

5. "Control, Extraction, Escape": Mindset and Motives (28:41–34:50)

• Will Shoki theorizes Musk internalized a settler-colonial mindset: obsession with controlling environments, extracting benefits, and fleeing when things sour—mirrored in his business and political attitudes.
• "Rather than save Earth, [Musk] seems resigned to its inevitable apocalypse... His solution is to aspire to become the world's first trillionaire and lead his own great pioneering trek to Mars." (29:05)

6. Musk and the Issue of Military Conscription (30:23–36:40)

• Musk claims he left South Africa to avoid conscription and "suppressing Black people" in the army.
  • Quote: “Spending two years suppressing black people didn’t seem to be a great use of time.” (30:32 – Musk)
• Rudolph Pienaar and Will Shoki dispute the drama of this claim—by the late 1980s, the system was collapsing, draft evasion was common, and actual risk of punishment was low.
  • "There was no need to, quote, unquote, flee the country to escape national service. You just didn't pitch up... Nothing would happen." (36:40 – Pienaar)

7. Musk’s Ambition and Emigration (37:09–39:44)

• Musk’s drive to leave was about opportunity and adventure. America (and Silicon Valley) were the ultimate goal.
  • “Whenever I'd read about cool technology, it would tend to be in the United States.” (38:18 – Musk)
• After high school, Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria to defer service, but was waiting for Canadian citizenship paperwork through his mother.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• "Elon the most Strong... Elon the most Intelligent... Elon the most Handsome... Every single character it was some superlative Elon the most something." – Rudolph Pienaar (13:37)
• "As a very typical white South African, you kind of lived a life of entitled or isolated privilege." – Rudolph Pienaar (17:56)
• "It was an upbringing that almost every white South African accessed during apartheid." – Will Shoki (18:44)
• "English speakers enjoyed all of the trappings of apartheid with the morally convenient arguments that they did not create the system." – Narrator (28:07)
• "He feels he has unfettered executive power that cannot be challenged and cannot be questioned." – Will Shoki (40:00)
• "Whenever I'd read about cool technology, it would tend to be in the United States." – Elon Musk (38:18)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:10 – Oval Office confrontation between Trump and Ramaphosa, Musk silent in the background
• 12:01 – Rudolph Pienaar recounts Musk’s childhood computer games (self-aggrandizement)
• 17:56 – Pienaar and Shoki describe apartheid-era privilege
• 21:23 – Deep dive into the apartheid system and spatial segregation
• 26:40 – The distinction between English and Afrikaner whites
• 28:41 – Will Shoki on Musk’s mindset: “Control, extraction, escape”
• 30:23 – Musk discusses dodging the army; the reality of conscription
• 37:09 – Musk’s ambitions to leave for America, Silicon Valley dreams
• 39:44 – Preview of the rest of the series

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Summary & Takeaways

Episode 1 frames Musk’s early life as the product of an insular, elite, and racially stratified society, and raises questions about how that background shaped his sense of entitlement, narrative control, and worldview. The episode challenges Musk’s self-portrayal as a conscientious objector and presents his emigration as less a matter of principle and more one of opportunity and privilege.

The episode sets the stage for further exploration of Musk’s complex family legacy and his enduring imprint on global politics and technology.

Transcript

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[Will Shoki]

This is a CBC podcast.

[Jacob Silverman]

Hey, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. Today we've got the first episode of a fantastic new series, the Making of Musk. It's about Elon, obviously, and you might be thinking, what's left to learn about this guy? Well, let me say a lot. The series looks at a much lesser known side of him, his South African roots. And it asks a fascinating question. Did the political and social climate of apartheid South Africa shape Elon and his family's worldview? Did it make him the man that he is? It's hosted by Jacob Silverman, who you've probably heard on Front Burner over the years. In episode one, Jacob takes a look at Elon's early life in South Africa and talks to people who knew him. Then later in the series, he examines Elon's grandfather's kind of bonkers political activism in Saskatchewan. Episode three is about Elon's 14 kids. It's really great, so follow the understood feed, and that way you won't miss those episodes of the Making of Musk I just mentioned. For now, enjoy episode one.

[Donald Trump]

And we'll be discussing that. We'll have a nice conversation, and I really appreciate that you guys came along.

[Narrator]

It's May 2025 in Washington, D.C. the White House.

[Donald Trump]

But it is a great honor to have you and I appreciate you called. He called. I don't know where he got my number, but I picked up.

[Narrator]

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa sits side by side with President Donald Trump in a crowded Oval Office. Relations with the Trump administration have been strained of late, so the stakes for Ramaphosa are high.

[Cyril Ramaphosa]

You might remember when I spoke to you and we spoke about golf, you said I should start practicing, and I'VE started practicing president, so I'm ready.

[Narrator]

So he has come prepared. A full on charm, offensive, gifts, jokes, even bringing along two of South Africa's most celebrated golfers, Ernie Ells and Retief Hussen, as part of his delegation. You see, after years of strong relations, Trump recently cut off aid to South Africa, citing an issue that has been gaining traction among the American right.

[Donald Trump]

But we have many people that feel they're being persecuted and they're coming to the United States. Generally, they're white farmers and they're fleeing South Africa. And it's a, you know, it's a very sad thing to see.

[Narrator]

White Afrikaner farmers, a minority population in South Africa, are seeking asylum in the US Bringing with them terrible stories of persecution, violent farm attacks, murders that they claim are politically motivated. The word genocide has even been used. How, Trump asks, can Ramaphosa let this happen?

[Cyril Ramaphosa]

I would say if there was Africana farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my Minister of Agriculture. He would not be with me.

[Narrator]

Ramaphosa points to his racially mixed delegation as evidence against the these claims. Violent crime, he admits, is a huge issue in South Africa, but it affects everyone, regardless of race. But Trump isn't having it.

[Donald Trump]

But Mr. President, I must say we have. No, no, wait.

[Narrator]

Trump directs an aide into action. Something appears to be happening.

[Donald Trump]

Turn the lights down and just put this on. It's right behind you.

[Narrator]

Trump points toward a tv. A montage has been prepared. Opposition politicians in South Africa making impassioned speeches and singing songs calling for attacks on white farmers. News reports of murdered white farmers. As the video reaches its crescendo, Trump starts to narrate.

[Donald Trump]

Now this is very bad. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites.

[Narrator]

On the screen is an aerial shot of a long straight road cutting through an expanse of farmland. A line of cars piling up.

[Donald Trump]

Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers. The family of white farmers. And those cars aren't driving. They're stopped there to pay respects to their family member who's killed.

[Narrator]

President Ramaphosa is stunned, confused.

[Cyril Ramaphosa]

Have they told you where that is, Mr. President? No, I'd like to know where that is, because this I've never seen.

[Donald Trump]

I mean, it's in South Africa.

[Narrator]

The honorable President Cyril Ramaphosa has just been Zelenskied. He's been ambushed during a public meeting with the most powerful man in the world. His plan to talk about a trade deal and reviving US foreign aid seems like a distant dream. However, there's something that Ramaphosa didn't know at that moment. Those white crosses in the video, those weren't burial sites at all. This was a fictional conspiracy theory that had somehow traveled from the margins of South African politics to the MAGA base and eventually to the White House, where it would be eagerly embraced by a president not known for his powers of discernment. But how had this right wing rage bait ended up on a big, beautiful TV in the Oval Office?

[Donald Trump]

But I have a great feeling for South Africa because I have friends. I have a couple of friends, a few friends here today.

[Narrator]

The answer was standing in the corner of the room, just out of view.

[Donald Trump]

Elon is from South Africa. I don't want to get Elon involved. That's all I have to do, get him into another thing.

[Narrator]

But the world's most famous living South African had been there all along. Uncharacteristically quiet.

[Donald Trump]

Elon happens to be from South Africa. This is what Elon wanted. He actually came here on a different subject. Sending rockets to Mars. Okay, he likes that better. He likes that subject better.

[Narrator]

Elon Musk, who left his native South Africa as a teenager and spent years distancing himself from the apartheid regime, lurks off camera as conspiracy theories about his homeland get presented to its head of state. Conspiracy theories he's fueled as part of a dramatic turn towards right wing politics that's consumed his life and his companies. Even Musk's AI chatbot Grok, which the tech mogul has promised to make anti woke, has started to pepper unrelated queries with comments about white genocide. By the time Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, Musk had become an omnipresent force in the administration. When he wasn't sleeping at Mar A Lago, he was sitting in on phone calls with foreign heads of state. Despite Trump claiming otherwise, Musk's interests now clearly extended far beyond rocket ships. Besides his support for Trump, Musk was waging a one man culture war on behalf of right wing and populist movements around the world, often to the detriment of his stock prices. Liberal and centrist European leaders denounced him for interfering in their politics. Musk didn't seem to care.

[Elon Musk]

Multiculturalism dilutes everything. We don't want everything to be the same everywhere, where it's just one big sort of soup. What meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives, then we don't live in a democracy. We Live in a bureaucracy. So my son Xavier is dead, Killed by the Woke Mind Virus. Us humans could do something crazy like World War Three. Hopefully not, but it's possible. And then if we only have one planet, then that could be curtains.

[Narrator]

Musk was supposed to be someone who thought on the grandest of scales. Conquering industries, escaping the bonds of gravity, to colonize Mars. But here, quietly lurking in an awkward Oval Office meeting, Musk was participating in a petty stunt. Watching the President of the United States willfully misinterpret facts about crime in South Africa to ambush the country's president. Moments like this prompt the how did Elon Musk get here? What explains these bizarre twists and turns in his life, which now seem to affect us all? The world's richest man shows an insatiable drive for dominance. He's compared himself to Alexander the Great, talks of raising a legion of children to colonize Mars, and displays a trollish disregard for others, from government workers to his own transgender daughter, who he said was killed by the Woke Mind virus. Can Musk's most outlandish ambitions and his most toxic qualities trace back to his youth in apartheid South Africa? And might his past reveal where he's taking us next? I'm your host, Jacob Silverman, and this is understood the Making of Musk Episode 1 Escape from Pretoria Elon Musk is a citizen of three countries. The US by choice, Canada by heritage, and South Africa by birth. He was born into a racially segregated apartheid South Africa in June 1971 to May and Errol Musk in a wealthy suburb of Pretoria, the country's administrative capital. Just a few months after his birth, a new industrial revolution emerged that would shape baby Elon's life. You're looking at something so astonishing, it almost contradicts everyday conceptions of reality. It does the work of a room full of electricity, circuits and is smaller than your fingertip. It's called a chip. That year, intel launched the first microprocessor and an engineer named Ray Tomlinson sent the first email through arpanet, the network that preceded the Internet. The digital and tech revolutions underway took a while to reach the sleepy burbs of Pretoria. But by the mid-80s, they had made their way to Elon Musk's doorstep.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

I do remember once in the 80s, going to his house and as most of us did, we were in this computer game. It was one of these fantasy role playing text games that were popular at the time. The basic idea is you create a party of characters and you go and explore stuff in this Computer fantasy world.

[Narrator]

This is Rudolph Pienaar. And the scene he's describing might be pretty familiar to nerdier types who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Just some friends huddled around a boxy at the time, very expensive computer in a dark room. The halcyon days of pre Internet gaming.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

So you know there's a prompt that flashes and you say go north and it says the next room. You've entered the next room and there is this and there's a treasure chest in the corner. And then you say open chest and they will say there is gold.

[Narrator]

By today's standards, it's all very simple. No music or graphics. Pretty much just white text on a black screen. But there is one place you can really let your creativity fly.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

When you create your party of characters, you obviously can choose, you know, whether it's an elf or an ogre or these different, you know, classical fantasy trope type races. And you also can give them a name. In my case, you might choose something from Lord of the Rings or something that has some meaning to you or whatever the case may be.

[Narrator]

For some kids it was a chance to be someone else. An eight foot tall warrior or an elven thief. A time to let your imagination run wild.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

So I do remember going to Elon's house and he fired up his game. And when he called up his party of characters that he had now created, there would be the ogre or something. And the name of that character was Elon the most Strong. And then there was the mage or the wizard. And that one was called Elon the most Intelligent. Elon the most Agile was the thief character. And Elon the most Handsome was one of them as well. For every single character it was some superlative Elon the most something. So if you were to read the narrative of the text, it would read like a story of Elon did something does something amazing and great.

[Narrator]

Every action, every spell, every victory, it all belonged to Elon. He didn't want to be someone else. He wanted to be the ultimate version of himself.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

I was thinking, oh my God, I've never seen that before. Looking back now, I would say are you so insecure maybe dude, that you have to name everything some supportive of yourself.

[Narrator]

Today Rudolph is a biomedical researcher at Boston's Children's Hospital. He spoke to me from his home on the Massachusetts coast.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

I went to Pretoria Boys High School and that is where my path began to cross with with Elon Musk. Back in the day we were all part of the sort of larger nerdy geek Grouping.

[Narrator]

After a brutal bullying incident, Musk transferred to Pretoria Boys High and he ended up in a school where he did not stick out. In fact, to a teenage Rudolph Elon Musk was unexceptional, just another guy in his social sphere. Even if he had shown a talent for coding and had managed to create and sell a computer game of his.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

Own, he didn't in my memory especially stand out for any particular thing. Right. He didn't stand out academically, he didn't stand out in sports, he didn't stand out in his ideas. He was kind of there, but also not there.

[Narrator]

Which is perhaps why that Elon the Most moment stands out so clearly. Young Elon seemed to thrive in the virtual world where he could try out different versions of himself. But in the real world, among his peers, there was no Elon the Great, even when it came to the level of material privilege he grew up with.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

So these houses were by American standards, if I compare it to stuff, certainly where I am in Massachusetts, these would be huge. They would be like McMansions.

[Narrator]

Musk's house was a large estate, luxurious by most standards. At one point it was the EU ambassador's residence in South Africa. But as Rudolf points out in Waterkloof, this was the norm. These were the sort of houses all boys like him lived in. The same goes for their school, Pretoria Boys High.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

For Americans, I would say imagine Hogwarts ish kind of school sitting in the Pretoria highveld.

[Narrator]

To an outsider it looks like the stuff of boarding school fantasy. Grand looking buildings, manicured lawns, garish blazers and straw boater hats. The sort of place with deep rooted traditions like regular practices of their war chant. This school chant, now reserved for sporting rivalries, is rooted in British colonial battles with the Afrikaner. Rudolph assures me in 1980s South Africa this was all completely normal stuff.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

Although at the time it was considered sort of standard middle upper class school.

[Narrator]

Perhaps it was standard in their world, but most schools I'm familiar with don't look like Harry Potter sets or have war cry practice. Even the very nice ones. But what Rudolph seemed to be trying to impress upon me was that in their world this sort of privilege with its upper crust traditions was taken for granted. The system was designed that way.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

As a very typical white South African, you kind of lived a life of entitled or isolated privilege.

[Narrator]

In their video games, in their elite schools, in their McMansions, boys like Elon and Rudolph were purposefully cloistered from the realities of South Africa.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

There was no real direct awareness of everything that was happening. The structure of society was such that you weren't really confronted by these gross and in your face inequalities. You just didn't see black people around living in the same neighborhood, but you would see black people working in the garden or helping out in the house. You didn't see the inequality face to face.

[Will Shoki]

There's something profoundly ordinary about his upbringing in the sense that it was an upbringing that I want to say almost every white South African accessed during apartheid.

[Narrator]

This is Will Shoki, a South African journalist who has written widely about Musk.

[Will Shoki]

That was what the system was designed to do. It was designed to, on the backs of an exploited class of black South African workers, produce a life of enormous privilege for a very, very tiny minority. And this is the kind of privilege where each family would at least have a four bedroomed house with a swimming pool with two maidservants and a gardener.

[Narrator]

This wasn't wealth accumulated over generations. This was a system deliberately engineered. The bubble where Elon and Rudolph lived was a product of one of the most racially and socially engineered societies ever created. A society that believed only certain people could rule.

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[Rudolph Pienaar]

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[Gavin Crawford]

Hey, I'm Gavin Crawford from the podcast Because News. It's a show where I ask comedians questions about the news of the week and they try their best not to answer correctly. This week we play a game called Two Truths and AI delve into some forgotten baseball slang as we cheer for the Jays. And I'll ask the panel which entertainer is refusing to perform in America this year. Join me, Martha Chavez, Alice Moran and Miguel Rivas. Three comedians who are not worried about getting yoinked off the air because they made fun of the president. Get because news wherever you get your podcast, which I'm presuming is here.

[Narrator]

In 1948, South Africa, which had experienced 300 years of European colonial rule, Was a racially segregated society where the white colonial minority had more social and political rights than the indigenous black majority. That year, the national party, controlled by the white Afrikaans minority, Won the general election, and it formally introduced apartheid, literally translated as separate or apartness. This is where the South African story diverges from the story of the Jim Crow south or other outposts of colonial Britain. A system of extreme segregation, according to the color of a person's skin, was enshrined into South Africa's constitution and its laws. The state was fully empowered to preserve racial hierarchies and white dominance without ambiguity. By the time Elon Musk came of age, apartheid was an entrenched social order, the law of the land for decades.

[Will Shoki]

And what he would have found then was a society structured entirely around white supremacy, spatial segregation, and militarized control.

[Narrator]

When he talks about control, will is referring to the government's establishment of strict reservations for specific racial groups. They were called the bantustans. By the time Elon was born, many of these bantustans had developed into cramped, impoverished shantytowns, with the residents providing labor for nearby cities or commercial zones, A stark contrast to Musk's sprawling childhood home in suburban Waterkloof. But the differences weren't just material. It was a question of rights. These people in a shanty town outside Johannesburg are among the millions of urban blacks drawn to the cities by the prospect of employment. Many stay here without work or residency permits. They run the risk of being sent to the distant black homeland designated to their particular ethnic group.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

Group.

[Narrator]

Starting in the 1950s, the apartheid government forced millions of people to move to these bantustans, or homelands. Then, in 1970, in an Orwellian twist, these bantustans were to be given independence. According to lawmakers, the residents of bantustans were no longer South African citizens. They were rendered foreigners in their own country, Cordoned off into these dystopian, militarized, highly regulated zones. The black people of South Africa began to resist and revolt. But the white nationalist government kept a tight grip on the media, Controlling the narrative for its white citizens. Cocooned in their bubble, as a wealthy.

[Will Shoki]

White English speaking boy, he would have moved through that world, insulated from its violence, but shaped by its foundational assumptions.

[Narrator]

Assumptions about the supremacy of the white ruling elite. The assumption that violence and social control were needed to maintain the system and the assumption that a hierarchical social order is natural and that people like him deserve to be at the top of it. Musk was not only born at the height of this system, he grew up in its epicenter. South Africa. In 1848, the Dutch pioneer leader Pretorius led his followers into the Transvaal. A few years later, a town had sprung up which was named after him. Pretoria. In 1910, the town became the capital of the newly formed Union of South Africa. And today Pretoria celebrates its centenary. Pretoria wasn't just South Africa's political capital, it was the beating heart of Afrikaner culture. Walk around the city today and you'll see monuments and grand buildings celebrating the Voortrekkers, the Dutch pioneers who trekked inland during the 1830s to escape British rule. These settlers fought indigenous peoples, seized the Transvaal region and founded Pretoria as their capital. Over time, they developed their own language, Afrikaans, and started calling themselves Afrikaners, the supposed true white Africans. Unlike those British newcomers, they belonged to this land. This is the group that would eventually control apartheid South Africa. And it's their descendants, South Africa's imperiled white farmers who today capture the attention of some of the most powerful people on the political right, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump. But there's an irony about Musk's role here. He's not one of them. He's an English speaker. And from what I have come to understand, those Afrikaner farmers appealing to Trump would be keenly aware of that.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

One thing to understand about the South African setup back in the day, and it still probably resonates to an extent today, is that it's not a monolithic culture or obviously not racially, but even culturally, within the different racial groups, there are very distinct cultural identities.

[Narrator]

This is Rudolph again. He's describing something that really hit home for me while reporting this series. This idea that you can't understand South Africa through the same lens as North American racial politics. The demographic complexity is staggering. The black indigenous population includes many different tribes, each with their own languages, cultures, histories. Then there's the so called colored community, descendants of indigenous Khoisan people, enslaved Malays, mixed race families, all caught up in the colonial project. Then there is the large Indian and Asian populations, the Jewish communities, the Muslim communities, and of course the white minority who historically ruled them all. And here's where it gets crucial for Musk's story. Even within that tiny white minority, there's a huge divide. The Afrikaans speaking Afrikaners and the English speaking whites, like Musk's family And those.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

Cultures, although they were lived side by side and somewhat intertwined, were very different, distinct, and unique.

[Narrator]

You might think that these two groups, the ones who benefited most from apartheid, would stick together, but they see their histories and place in South Africa completely differently. And that distinction puts Musk in an even more privileged position than you might imagine. English speakers enjoyed all of the trappings of apartheid with the morally convenient arguments that they did not create the system. This lets them selectively distance themselves from the regime when the wheels begin to come off in the 1990s.

[Will Shoki]

Even if Musk later distanced himself from apartheid, that formative environment must have given him, at least, I argue, a settler colonial mindset that centered on ideas of control, extraction, and escape as solutions to the problems of living in society.

[Narrator]

Control, extract, escape. I mean, it's hard not to see today's Musk in those terms. The Musk who wasn't happy just being the most famous guy on Twitter. He needed to own it and control it, too. Or the Musk who wasn't just content to influence Muslim politics. He had to become practically a shadow president. The man who once resigned from a government advisory council in protest after Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords now downplays the threat of climate change while his AI data centers burn ever more fossil fuels. This is someone who, rather than save Earth, seems resigned to its inevitable apocalypse. His solution is to aspire to become the world's first trillionaire and lead his own great pioneering trek to Mars. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We need to go back to teenage Musk and what Will mentioned about him distancing himself from apartheid. This is undoubtedly true. Here's Musk speaking to actor Rainn Wilson, aka Dwight Schrute, from the Office back in 2013. You grew up in South Africa? Yeah.

[Gavin Crawford]

You were in the army there?

[Elon Musk]

No, no, I left at 17. Well, in part, in order to avoid conscription into the South African army.

[Gavin Crawford]

So you left so that you didn't have to do the army?

[Elon Musk]

You know, spending two years suppressing black people didn't seem to be a great use of time.

[Narrator]

I think that's probably the worst use of any human being's time. Right.

[Elon Musk]

So good for you. Right?

[Narrator]

Elon Musk, draft dodger. Elon Musk, draft dodger. Was it that straightforward?

[Rudolph Pienaar]

When you finished high school, you had to do two years of national service. It was mandatory conscription for all white males.

[Narrator]

Mandatory military service was introduced in South Africa in 1967. For white schoolboys like Musk and Rudolph, the prospect of conscription loomed over their futures.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

There was the sense that, oh, when I finish high school, I have to go to the army unless I go to university. That was a very real thing. Most people were concerned more about that.

[Narrator]

Than anything else when they were growing up. Going to university deferred your mandatory service till after graduation, but it didn't put it off completely. Joining the military meant that you might be sent to fight in the South African border war, A long running conflict that in which the apartheid government invaded some of its neighbors to smash anti colonial and independence movements. The undeclared border war dragged on for more than 23 years, becoming one of the major proxy wars of the Cold War era.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

There was a sort of undeclared hot zone skirmish war, if you will, between South African supported forces in Angola and Cuban Soviet supported forces on the other side. And that was a reality that we all had to prepare ourselves for.

[Narrator]

A heady prospect for any teen. This idea of nations as a bulwark against communism is a familiar one. West Germany, Korea, Vietnam. And in South Africa's mind, it deserved a place on that list and the political kudos that came with it.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

If only the west, the quote unquote west knew how valuable South Africa was. If it wasn't for us standing against the communists, then Russia would be here and take over.

[Narrator]

Growing up, Rudolph remembers this feeling that South Africa was an unrecognized victim of the Cold War, unappreciated for its contributions to preserving the global order.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

In the late 1980s there was this huge kind of lager mentality that the entire world is against us. If only they knew what the reality of Africa is. And they don't know because they're not here.

[Narrator]

When Rudolf says logger mentality, he's describing what we'd call a siege mentality. A tendency by the white Afrikaans community to feel like it was them against the world. And they weren't wrong. By the 1980s, the tide was beginning to turn against the apartheid government. During the height of the Cold War, the West might have tolerated or even supported South Africa's racial caste system. But then came anti colonial and civil rights movements that upended political systems from algiers to Washington D.C. as the Cold War thawed, South Africa's argument that it was one of the last lines of defense against the march of communism found few takers. Since the 1950s, the black people of South Africa and some white allies had been organizing against this cruel racist system, forming nonviolent and violent movements against apartheid. This struggle became a global story with the opposition's Jailed leader Nelson Mandela becoming an icon of the fight for basic freedoms. By the early 1980s, many Western cities had anti apartheid movements that organized rallies, handed out flyers and held concerts, attracting everyone from radical students to Hollywood celebrities. It was a political movement with pop cultural appeal. As kids across the globe danced to the special AKA's incredibly catchy song Free Nelson Mandel. It wasn't until 1986 that the United States finally brought sanctions against South Africa. It was no longer possible to turn a blind eye to apartheid or to defend some of the Cold War's grim moral compromises. The old myths were unraveling. In 1988, with South Africa's townships riven by uprisings, the apartheid government moved Nelson Mandela to an open prison to improve his health and facilitate peace talks. That same year, Rudolf and Elon finished high school. By now it was clear that the old system was collapsing. This is when Elon finds his exit, escapes from Pretoria and dodges the draft. Or at least that's the story he tells. Did you end up serving in the military there?

[Rudolph Pienaar]

No, no, I didn't. I went to meet at university after, after high school. In those cases, what would have happened was that your national service would have been deferred until you were finished.

[Narrator]

When he graduated high school, Rudolph went to the University of Pretoria. The prospect of military service still loomed, but not for long. By 1989, when Rudolph started university, parts of the apartheid system were already being dismantled.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

There was a sense of change that is going to be happening that was inevitable. By my second year of university, national service was scaled down to one year only. This was 1990. By 1991, the writing was really on the wall. Apartheid was ending, was over, and national service was no longer an issue.

[Narrator]

So this is where for Rudolph, the story that Musk tells, leaving South Africa to dodge the draft doesn't quite land.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

There was no need to, quote, unquote, flee the country to escape national service. You just didn't pitch up, as we would say in South African slang. Everyone knew at that point that if you just didn't even show up, nothing would happen to you. So it wasn't a real concern.

[Will Shoki]

Rather than viewing it as something that required bravery from Musk, I would say that he saw the writing on the wall and probably just hopped on a bandwagon that was already in motion.

[Narrator]

This is Will Shoki again. Like Rudolph, Will isn't quite buying the Elon narrative, that it was some kind of noble minded act, that there was some kind of moral reasoning at the heart of his decision. It's fair to ask, how much can a place that Musk lived until he was 17 really tell us about the man he eventually became? South Africa provided a young Elon Musk with many advantages. Material privilege, an elite education, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a desire to plant his flag in the world, or perhaps even on another one. Musk's desire to emigrate lay more in what the world offered than in what his country would deny him. It was an opportunistic plan. Musk sought adventure. It was time for Elon, the most strong, to claim his place in history. Growing up in South Africa, obsessed with technology and computers, a teenage Musk would have had one eye on the source of it all.

[Elon Musk]

Whenever I'd read about cool technology, it would tend to be in the United States. So I kind of wanted to be where the cutting edge of technology was. And of course, within the United States, Silicon Valley, the heart of things, is so.

[Narrator]

Although at the time I didn't know.

[Elon Musk]

Where Silicon Valley was. It sounded like some mythical place.

[Narrator]

But how would he get there? After high school, Musk also enrolled in the University of pretoria. He was 17. Rudolph remembers seeing him about the campus. This was a calculated decision for Musk. He wasn't much interested in the academics on offer. But being in school deferred the immediate threat of being called up. He didn't plan to stay there long. According to Ashley Vance, Musk's biographer, he was essentially counting down the clock until a vital document arrived. You see, Musk had a golden ticket, a claim to Canadian citizenship. Canada was not California, but it was a hell of a lot closer than Pretoria. He was able to claim Canadian citizenship through his mother, May, and her father, Joshua Haldeman, a man whose incredible life story shaped Musk in untold ways. Coming up on this season of Understood the Making of Musk.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

Here's a guy who fought elections against two Canadian prime ministers.

[Jacob Silverman]

I think where this movement becomes alarming is when it bleeds into authoritarianism and oligarchy.

[Narrator]

This kid's got a kind of reality.

[Rudolph Pienaar]

Distortion field that goes around him.

[Will Shoki]

He feels he has unfettered executive power that cannot be challenged and cannot be questioned.

[Narrator]

We contacted Elon Musk through his family office. He did not respond to our request for comment. The Making of Musk is a chalk and blade production for cbc. It is written and produced by Jason Phipps, M. Walley, Eva Krisiak and me, Jacob Silverman. In this episode, you heard clips from cbc, BBC, CNBC Television, Pretoria, Boys High, Associated Press, British Pathe, SoulPancake, the Specials, NBC, SpaceX Jordan Peterson, the Independent and the Computer History Museum. Matthew Blackman is our South African story consultant. Fabiola Carletti is our coordinating producer. Mixing and sound design by Julian Uzieli. Our story editor is Derek John. Our Executive producer is Nick McCabe. Locos. Thanks as well to Thula Simpson, Associate professor of History at the University of Pretoria, for sharing his insights with us in the background research for this episode. You can follow Understood on whatever app you're using to listen to me now and check out my previous season, the Naked Emperor, a deep dive into fallen crypto king Sam Bankman Fried.

[Jacob Silverman]

That was the first episode of the Making of Musk, a brand new season from CBC's Understood. Follow Understood by searching for it or by searching the Making of Musk wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator]

For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.