I used to like Elon Musk – a lot. I also used to admire him for what he’s been able to achieve at his age. And, of course, he was born in South Africa. I wanted him to succeed in his endeavours because I thought the technologies his companies produced could be good for human progress.
In many ways they are – but he is not.
In recent times there has been significant public debate about Starlink and communications minister Solly Malatsi’s decision to use the equity equivalents instrument instead of a black economic empowerment shareholding. This is far less important to me, and if anyone reading this think what I say below is about BEE, they will be sorely disappointed.
I don’t like Musk anymore, not because he is white, unpleasant to have a beer with or ugly. A person can be any of these and still be worthy of granting an operating licence to because these things do not harm society in and of themselves. I have far more serious concerns about Starlink and the way Musk has reshaped his X platform, formerly Twitter.
I also have no difficulty with Musk being a political donor in the US. Countless businesspeople are donors in the US and here in South Africa. I may not like that there are no limits to how much one person can donate in the US, but that is a matter for US voters and their representatives to do something about.
Vehemently opposed
Yet I am one of those vehemently opposed to licensing Starlink in South Africa. This is why:
Firstly, Musk is a proven purveyor of dangerous misinformation and disinformation. He uses his X platform for this purpose and has taken active measures to ensure that the fact-checking capacity the platform has been diminshed. He claimed, falsely, that the fact checkers were limiting freedom of speech. He is intelligent and knows this is not true.
To some, disinformation may not matter. But it does, especially when it is used to sow discord in society. For example, let’s say someone posts a video of a white person assaulting a black person. That video might have been shot in another country, but a claim is made that it happened recently in South Africa. With our history, such claims could easily inflame racial tensions and even violence.
Read: ANC’s attack on Solly Malatsi shows how BEE dogma trumps economic reality
Quickly debunking such posts is important for social order and our nation-building project. Removing the capacity to inform citizens that such content is untrue is important; taking down harmful content from the platform is a good thing. But Musk clearly does not think so. And so, his platform, which is used by millions of people across the world, is a cesspit of disinformation and hate speech. He revels in it.
Secondly, for democracy to work as it should, people need accurate information so they can exercise sound political judgment. This is why news media platforms take fact checking seriously and will apologise if they publish inaccurate information. Anyone who sets out to spread false information themselves, and weaponises a powerful platform like X for the same purpose, is no friend of democracy.
We have seen how this has harmed South Africa through Musk’s actions. I am grateful to News24 for exposing the role of certain South Africans who worked in collaboration with other purveyors of disinformation to spread the lie of white genocide through farm murders. But the active spreading of that lie has significantly informed decisions by the Trump administration that are potentially harmful to South Africans and the country itself.
For example, it places the exports of the very farmers spreaders of this farm purport to want to protect at risk. If or when the US government sanctions South Africa, imposes ill-informed tariffs on us or cancels our participation in the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act, the harm will be felt by millions of South Africans.
Read: The internet is slipping beyond authoritarian control
Again, Musk knows this very well, but persists anyway.
Third, he is impulsive and abusive with countries he considers weak and uses the very technology they pay him for to strong-arm them. He has repeatedly threatened to cut his Starlink service to the Ukrainian military – to the extent that Poland, which also relies on Starlink to defend itself against Russian aggression, is seeking alternatives.
Last July, Reuters reported that Musk ordered Starlink to cut service to the Ukrainian military while they were in the middle of a critical counteroffensive to repel Russia’s occupation army. He denied the charge, but the reporting was strongly sourced with names and times and quoted actual communication.
This is not only worrying from a security perspective, but also in terms of how contracts are supposed to work. A service provider is contractually bound to provide that service and not act on the political or other whims of its founder or shareholder. It makes them unreliable and a risk to do business with.
Finally, Musk has actively promoted white supremacist ideas, even giving the Nazi salute on stage. Call me naive and idealistic, but I still think character matters. Yet to some, it apparently really doesn’t. He has also spread racist lies about black and brown immigrants in the US and elsewhere. Such lies are harmful to these communities and cause deep political and social divisions that he feels no responsibility for.
Read: Starlink, Musk face rising political resistance in South Africa
Given the racism he has enabled on his platforms, I can say with near certainty that Musk does not care about black children in some village in South Africa. If he did, he would not have cancelled aid through USAid to millions of starving children across our continent when he was head of the US department of government efficiency.
Surely even the most incorrigible among us cannot possibly believe that someone who has no problem starving children and refugees otherwise cares deeply about South African children without access to the internet.
In recent days, the US government announced an integrated defence technological platform involving Grok and Starlink. No sane country would willy-nilly accept technology from a company so deeply entwined with the politics and defence strategies of a country that keeps threatening South Africa based on egregious lies.
For these and other reasons, the case for Starlink has not yet been properly made. If anything, Musk’s record is full of red flags that far too many loud voices are willing to ignore simply because they hate BEE. This is like cutting your nose to spite your face.
- Songezo Zibi is leader of Rise Mzansi and a former editor of Business Day