Elon Musk declared he considered himself to be “an American” but people were quick to point out the hypocrisy in his statement.
The senior advisor to US president Donald Trump was born in Pretoria, South Africa on June 28, 1971 and moved to America on a student visa after emigrating to Canada in 1989 and obtaining a Canadian passport through his mother, Maye Musk, who was born in Canada. He later studied at the University of Pennsylvania and officially became an American citizen in 2002.
Musk, founder of Tesla and Space X, reposted a video on social media platform X on March 4 by American political commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing South African writer and filmmaker Ernst Roest about some critical issues in his country. In his tweet, Musk said: “Should note that I grew up as English South African, not Afrikaans, and consider myself to be simply an American. No hyphen.
“That said, what’s happening in South Africa is deeply wrong. Not what Mandela intended at all.” Elon Musk faces criticism by an X user, rzep8, who replied to his tweet: “So you identify as someone else than you were born as? Interesting.”
This sparked debate as other users got involved in the conversation. One person hit back: “He literally IS an American so…” to which rzep8 responded: “He wasn’t born an American. He had it changed later in life.”
Another added: “African American.. That’s what he is now!” while a different user pointed out that Musk’s grandfather “was an American as well”, in reference to Joshua N.Haldeman, an American-born Canadian-South African chiropractor, aviator and politician who was the maternal grandfather of Elon Musk.
Someone else on X said Musk is an “English South African who naturalised to American citizenship.” One user put forward: “So you think the geolocation of your birth determines your identity? Interesting.”
Others who agreed with rzep8 that it is hypocritical for Musk to declare that he has an American raised points including: “You came here as an adult. You can’t relate to the American experience that all peoples born and raised here share in common across regions and classes” and “If you consider yourself American why do you have citizenship in four countries?”. Musk has citizenship in the US, South Africa and Canada.
Although the tech mogul considers himself to be “an American”, he has spoken out about South Africa. The country signed a new land law in January, that allows for land seizures without compensation in certain circumstances, according to BBC News.
Trump froze financial aid to South Africa in an executive order last month as he alleged there was discrimination against the white Afrikaner minority, descendants of Dutch and French settlers, and on Friday (March 7) he extended his invitation to relocate those seeking “to flee [South Africa] for reasons of safety” to all farmers, not just Afrikaner ones, and offered them citizenship.
