INSIDERS ON THE SECRETS THAT HAUNT THE FAMILY: ‘ERROL HAS DESTROYED BEAUTIFUL JANA’
Tycoon’s ‘evil’ dad fathered his stepdaughter’s baby
HE’S described as the Thomas Edison of the 21st century – a visionary and pioneer who sends rockets into space, builds technologically advanced electric cars and wants to colonise Mars. In fact, it seems there’s little that entrepreneur extraordinaire Elon Musk can’t do when he sets his mind to it and he has an $18,9 billion (R217 billion) fortune to fund his dreams.
But there’s one thing no amount of money can buy: family harmony.
Because when it comes to his clan, to describe them as complicated would be an understatement.
At the heart of the unhappiness and drama is Errol, Elon’s 72-year-old father – and a man he clearly can’t stand.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine the 46-year-old SpaceX founder describes his father as “such a terrible human being – you have no idea”.
“My dad will have a carefully thoughtout plan of evil,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “He’ll plan evil. Almost every crime you can think of, he’s done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he’s done. It’s so terrible, you can’t believe.”
Errol’s most recent deed has been to father a child with his stepdaughter, a woman 42 years his junior.
He apparently impregnated his stepdaughter “in the heat of the moment”, he says, and the result is a10-month-old baby boy.
The child and his mom, Jana Bezuidenhout (30), have a room in Errol’s spacious double-storey home in Langebaan on the Cape West Coast.
Sources close to the family tell us they’re furious and believe Errol took advantage of Jana and her mom, HeideMarie (53), over the years.
Errol is the father of Elon, Kimbal (45) and Tosca (43) with his first wife, Maye (69), and has two daughters with Heide- Marie, Alexandra (24) and Rose (18).
Errol’s behaviour has caused a rift in Heide-Marie’s family but he’s denied any wrongdoing.
Yet the family sources are adamant: “Errol has destroyed beautiful Jana.”
HEIDE-MARIE met Errol a few months after the death of her first husband, Jacques, in a car crash near the Pretoria Zoo. Heide and Jacques had three children – Herman (then 6), Jana (then 2) and Jacques (then three months).
“Heide was fragile,” one of our sources says. “They met at a popular nightclub in Pretoria. She was in her twenties and he was in his mid-forties at the time.
“He invited her and her friend to his fancy Waterkloof home [in Pretoria]. He promised her the sun, moon and stars.”
Years later, when Jana was a teenager, Elon bought Errol, Heide and the children a house in Bel Air, California, to “get
them out of the situation in South Africa”, the sources say.
The family returned to South Africa a few months later and Heide and Errol divorced sometime after.
Elon is still quite involved with his South African family and helps financially where he can, our sources say.
“They’re so proud of him and are so angry and heartsore that this dark cloud hangs over the family,” one source says.
Elon was a little boy when Maye divorced Errol. Elon’s mom has been living for years in Canada, where she works as an older model – or “silver swan”.
The Tesla mogul is close to her but has no time for Errol. He’s learnt that nothing can be done to change his dad’s ways, he told Rolling Stone.
“I’ve tried everything. I tried threats, rewards, intellectual arrangements, emotional arguments, everything to try to change my father for the better and he . . . No way, it just got worse.”
Meanwhile, Errol and an old friend from Pretoria have been chatting openly on his Facebook page about what the friend calls the “Errol Syndrome” – a reference to what they describe as his “mild perversions”.
“In our 60-year friendship I’m in awe of your controversial accomplishments and look forward to many more years of scandal, infamy and unconventional Errol behaviour!” the friend writes.
Errol thanks him for the support. “That means the women I was married to in the ’80s are the children’s stepmothers and their children are my stepchildren. And the man Jana’s mother married after our two-year relationship ended is also Jana’s stepfather!”
The friend goes on to encourage Errol, who’s “given us the likes of Elon”, to keep procreating. “Continue sowing your seeds with unrestricted abandon!”
He then writes about research proving that men in their seventies who impregnate women in their twenties are drinking from “the fountain of youth”.
“Lucky devil, you!” he adds.
ALARGE boat covered in a tarp and four vehicles are parked outside Errol’s Langebaan home, which has sweeping views of the rocky Atlantic coastline. The garden looks lush, seemingly unaffected by the Western Cape drought.
There’s a rustling at the front door and a tall man with unruly grey hair appears on the other side of the palisade gate, Elon with his mom, Maye, Errol’s first wife. Maye now lives in Canada and is a model and dietitian. dressed in old tracksuit pants, a blue T-shirt and a khaki jacket. He seems to have woken up recently and declines to speak to us. It was a different story in 2013 when YOU visited Errol when he was living in another Langebaan house.
Back then he was excited and eager to talk about his successful sons, Elon and Kimbal – an entrepreneur, philanthropist and restaurateur – telling us how he’d raised them as a single dad.
But today he’s in no mood to talk about any of his children, especially not his new baby son.
However, in a recent interview with the Daily Mail following Elon’s Rolling Stone comments, Errol didn’t mince his words.
“Elon needs to grow up,” he said. “He needs to get over himself. I’m not going to hit back. I’m not going to wait until he comes to his senses. He can’t have what he wants and now I’m apparently an evil monster.”
Errol, a consulting engineer, is described in the Daily Mail as “a craggily good-looking man with a 1 000-watt smile and an easy humour who still flies his own plane up the spectacular West Coast and has a fishing boat parked in the garage next to a silver Bentley Continental”.
Errol says when they were young his kids wanted for nothing. He drove them to school in a convertible Rolls-Royce and they rode thoroughbred horses and had motorbikes at the age of 14.
“They were spoilt, I suppose,” he says. “Maybe that’s why Elon is acting like a spoilt child now.”
‘My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil’