Berliner Tageblatt - Musk's father seeking Russian refuge for S.African farmers

The initiative would resettle 50 families from the white Afrikaans minority, descendants of the first Dutch settlers, according to a Russian official.

The same group of South Africans have been offered refugee status by the government of US President Donald Trump, which has falsely claimed they face persecution under the post-apartheid government.

Nearly 5,000 white Afrikaners have entered the United States as refugees since Trump took office in January last year and all but halted refugee programmes for every other group.

The US programme has angered the South African government which denies any discrimination.

Contacted by AFP by telephone on Tuesday, Errol Musk told AFP from Moscow: "It's about providing refugee status to South African farmers."

– 50 families –

Musk, who regularly visits Russia and attended an April 12 Orthodox Easter mass in Moscow in the presence of President Vladimir Putin, did not give details of the project.

In an interview with Russian media Gubernia 33, he justified the project by claiming white Afrikaner farmers were being targeted for murder, allegations strongly denied in South Africa.

Washington made similar claims in its justification for encouraging Afrikaners to resettle in the United States.

The governor of the Vladimir region which borders the Moscow region, Aleksandr Avdeyev, said last week that he had discussed the project with Musk.

"We discussed the development of agriculture and the prospects for settling 50 Dutch-origin families from South Africa," he said on Telegram.

While Afrikaners have been emigrating to Russia since at least 2018, according to reports, Musk's involvement appears to be new information.

Now in his late 70s, he is a polarising figure.

In an interview with CNN late last year, he rejected there had been racial oppression under apartheid, a harsh system of segregation which denied the black majority basic rights.

Elon Musk, who left South Africa in his late teens, regularly accuses the government of racism, particularly over its failure to grant his Starlink internet provider a licence.

In a new outburst on social media this weekend, he said: "South Africa won't allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply because I am not Black!"

South African laws designed to rebalance apartheid-era discrimination require large companies to be at least 30-percent owned by people from previously disadvantaged communities.

Elon Musk was peddling "lies and disinformation", President Cyril Ramaphosa's spokesman responded on X.

- Puzzling -

Errol Musk's Russia project was "puzzling", said Friedrich von Treskow, a former researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, who has worked on Russian influence in southern Africa.

Pretoria and Moscow have close ties that date back to the struggle against apartheid, when the Soviet Union provided support to the African National Congress and its military wing.

"It could create tensions with Pretoria," von Treskow told AFP of Musk senior's scheme.

"Pretoria has been very reluctant to criticise Russia on any issue whatsoever."

Ramaphosa in February expressed "heartfelt gratitude" to Putin for agreeing to facilitate the return of more than a dozen men lured into fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

Fifteen of them have since returned.

Last month, the Forbidden Stories investigative media outlet reported that ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula had in December 2024 thanked Russian influence agents for their "assistance" before the general election earlier that year.

He also "requested" at a secret meeting $300,000 to fund an ANC party congress.

Mbalula, among the men tipped to replace Ramaphosa as head of the party, which could put him in the running for president, rejected the claims as "unfounded" and "part of a disinformation campaign."

M.Ouellet--BTB