Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye, was a Canadian-born model and dietician. His father, Errol Musk, was an electromechanical engineer born in South Africa. A brother and sister joined the family soon after Elon was born.
Compared with his siblings, Elon was quiet. His mother would later say that his introversion, especially compared with his more outgoing siblings, made her fear that he might be deaf.
When Musk was 10, his parents divorced and Elon lived mostly with his father, who moved around South Africa. It was a difficult time, as Errol was reportedly tough with his children to the point of abuse, often lecturing Musk and his brother for hours.
BULLIED AS A CHILD
Musk’s intellectual aptitude did him few favors as a child. He found few friends in the tough-minded Afrikaner culture he encountered in school.Musk attended the English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School, and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. The years were lonely and brutal, from his descriptions.If there was a point of bright escape for Musk, it was technology. When he was only 10, he became acquainted with programming via the Commodore VIC-20, an inexpensive home computer. Before long, he had become proficient enough to create Blastar – a video game in the style of Space-Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500.At 17, Musk moved to Canada to avoid serving in the South African military, whose main duty in the late 1980s was enforcing apartheid. He later obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother.
