This is NOT a Photo of Elon Musk's Family during Apartheid in South Africa!

The world-famous business magnate Elon Musk is also renowned as a figure who often comes up with controversial discussions on social media. As a result, Elon Musk gets criticized a lot also on social media circles; however, sometimes, these criticisms are based on false information. Let's look at the claim first.

Social Media Posts

Social media posts being shared about Elon Musk, based on a photo, state that the picture depicts young Elon Musk with his mother and a black servant, who was not allowed to at least sit on a chair. These posts try to convey that Musk is racist because even in childhood, he was grown in a racist background.

Facebook | Archived

First, we did a Google Reverse Image search and found that the image is unrelated to Elon Musk.

Fact Check

The image was captured in 1988 by a photographer named Rosalind Solamond in Johannesburg, South Africa. The title of the photo is "Mother, Daughter, Maid (Johannesburg, South Africa)." Hence, the kid in the photo was a little girl and could not have been Elon Musk. Furthermore, Elon Musk was born in 1971, and in 1988, he was a 17-year-old teenager. The original photograph is below.

NGA | Archived Harvard Art Museum

Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that the woman seen in the social media posts is Musk's mother, Maye Musk, from the mid-80s.

So clearly, the above photo had no connections to Musk's family, yet it is true that Elon Musk was raised in South Africa at a time when apartheid was still being practiced. This New York Times article shed light on Musk's childhood years in South Africa.

However, some recent statements of Elon Musk have created a spur in social circles, and some interpret these as Musk is skeptical about the discrimination and hate speech against black Americans, such as this report which states that Black workers at a California Tesla factory, which Musk owns, had alleged rampant racism directed towards Black factory workers.

Furthermore, especially Musk's comments for this video on X by Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) gained a lot of attention recently when Musk replied that the “Kill the Boer, the farmer” chants in the video by EFF leader refer to "openly pushing for the genocide of white people in South Africa.”

Earlier, in February this year also, Elon Musk accused the media of being racist against whites and Asians after U.S. newspapers dropped a white comic strip author who made derogatory comments about Black Americans.

The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today were among the newspapers that canceled the cartoon "Dilbert" after its creator Scott Adams said Black Americans were a hate group and posted racist comments on his YouTube channel. Elon Musk even tweeted his displeasure over above mentioned media institutes censoring the content of controversial cartoonists. Archived

Recent controversial behavior of Elon Musk against Black Americans can be read here. Archived

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Conclusion

According to our investigation, we found out that the viral photo, which claimed to have depicted Elon Musk and his mother treating a black servant inhumanly, was not connected with Elon Musk or his family and it's a photo of another family. However, some of Musk's recent behavior towards black Americans have been controversial, which likely paved the way for such criticisms in social media.