Featured Image Credit: ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO / Contributor / Getty
The Musk family has never struggled to attract public attention.
And Elon Musk's recent status as the world's richest man has made details about his personal life and how he came to be the man he is a lot more interesting.
While Elon has a complicated relationship with some of his 14 children, his estrangement from his own father runs deeper still.
According to Ashlee Vance's biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, the breaking point came when Elon learned that his father had fathered a child with Jana Bezuidenhout, the daughter of his former wife. The revelation reportedly pushed the relationship past the point of repair, and Elon and his first wife, Justine Wilson, are said to have agreed that their own children would not spend time around Errol.
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Now, in a recent interview on the Wide Awake Podcast, Errol discussed the situation surrounding his ex-stepdaughter. Hosted by Joshua Rubin, the conversation covers Errol's upbringing in South Africa, how he made his fortune, raising Elon and his thoughts on his son's rise to global fame.
Errol had married Jana's mother, Heide-Mari Bezuidenhout, around 1992, becoming a stepfather to Jana, who was four at the time, and her two brothers. The marriage eventually ended, as did his role as her stepfather.
Years later, after Jana had split from her own partner and was going through a difficult period, reportedly having lost custody of a child and struggling with addiction, Errol offered her a place to stay.
In a YouTube Short from the episode, the South African businessman recalled that Jana spent three weeks at his home and they both 'got on very, very well.'
He was reportedly 70 at the time while Jana was 30.
Three months after she left, Jana called and told him she needed to talk. She showed Errol an ultrasound scan at four and a half months, Errol explained.
Wanting to be certain, Errol had blood samples sent cryogenically to a facility in Canada for $20,000. which confirmed he was the father with '99.9% certainty.'
Both decided to go ahead with the pregnancy, though their wishes on what to do next differed.
Jana reportedly wanted to keep things private and reconcile with her former partner, but Errol chose to go public. Their son Elliot was born in 2017.
