Errol Musk discussed a proposal in Moscow to resettle South African Afrikaner families in Russia.

• Errol Musk said he was involved in a project to grant refugee status in Russia to South African farmers.
• Russian officials indicated the initiative could resettle around 50 Afrikaner families, amid similar offers previously made by the United States.
• The proposal drew scrutiny as South Africa rejected claims of persecution, warning that such narratives were inaccurate.

The father of tech billionaire Elon Musk is working on a project to grant refugee status in Russia to South African farmers, he told AFP on Tuesday, a project similar to one by the US government.

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.

READ | Nearly 5 000 South Africans take up Trump’s refugee offer

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 a 12 April 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.

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% owned by people from previously disadvantaged communities.

Elon Musk was peddling “lies and disinformation”, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson 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.

READ | Not in our name: Afrikaners respond to the misuse of their story in US politics

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.”