The father of Elon Musk has said that he fathered a child with his stepdaughter after a one-off mistake, and has said that he is no longer in a relationship with his stepdaughter, although she still lives on his property.
Errol Musk’s dark secret was exposed Friday by the Daily Mail, which reported that he had a young child with Jana Bezuidenhout, the daughter of his former wife Heide.
Jana was 3 when she joined the family. She grew up alongside Elon and they count each other as siblings.
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Errol Musk, who lives in South Africa, appeared to attempt to suggest the relationship was not incestuous by saying that Jana was “no longer” his stepdaughter as he had divorced her mother.
He also told the Daily Mail he would not recognize his former wife if he passed her in the street.
However it has emerged that Errol and Heide were married for 18 years and Jana had lived with Errol since she was a toddler.
Errol and Heide have two other children together.
Following the revelations over the weekend, Errol told his local Afikaans-language Rapport newspaper: “It happened in the heat of the moment. I do not want to call it a mistake, because no child wants to hear that they were a mistake.
“It happened one night when Jana’s boyfriend threw her out of the house and she stayed over at my house,” he said (per Google translate).
“You must understand—I’ve been single for 20 years.”
Errol told Rapport that Jana lives on the same property as he does, with their ten month old son, but that they are not in a relationship.
“Her boyfriend stays with her most of the time,” he said.
Heide-Mari Musk, Jana’s mother and Errol’s ex-wife, told Rapport: “He’s a bad man who caused great pain for me and his children and has now brought shame on the family again.
“We are furious that he could make his own stepchild pregnant.
“I still support Jana but [Errol] does not deserve to be a father,” she said.
“We have tried to get peace in our hearts, but he has now ruined everything.”
The revelations have made sense of a great bitterness expressed by Elon Musk, the Space X founder and PayPal billionaire.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Elon broke down in tears as he spoke about his father, saying: “My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil. He will plan evil. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done. It’s so terrible, you can’t believe it.”
