It was a bombshell statement from Elon Musk during a Q&A last week: He can’t get a license to operate his Starlink satellite internet service in South Africa, his native country, “because I’m not black.”
And, indeed, news reports that came out earlier that day stated that the current government of South Africa was going to bend the rules for him so that Starlink service can reach there — but also to curry favor with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration after a testy meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week.
Leaving aside the allegations made in the meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa — in which Trump implied there was “persecution or genocide going on” in South Africa as the majority-black nation increasingly pressures the country’s white minority economically — the fact-check question remains: Is Musk banned from owning a company in South Africa “because I’m not black”?
The short answer is: Yes, more or less, although the realities are much more nuanced than just those five words.
The exchange came during Musk’s remote interview at the Qatar Economic Forum, which was a wide-ranging one — although the one geopolitical sound-bite that came out of the nearly 40-minute talk touched on one very specific topic, one that Bloomberg had broken that morning:
South Africa’s government plans to offer Elon Musk a workaround of local Black-ownership laws for his Starlink internet service to operate in the country, aiming to ease tensions with both the billionaire and US President Donald Trump.
The offer will come at a last-minute meeting planned for Tuesday night between Musk or his representatives and a delegation of South African officials traveling with President Cyril Ramaphosa, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
It’s meant to defuse the onslaught of criticism by Musk and Trump — who’ve spread the conspiracy theory that there’s a genocide against White people in Africa’s most-industrialized nation — before Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House on Wednesday, said the people, who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to discuss the matter.
As it would transpire, that defusing did not take place, but the move may have broader implications to how foreign investment in South Africa takes place and how much of an interest Musk takes in it.
Because — make no mistake — in his remarks beamed to Qatar on May 20, Musk very much had an interest in it.
When asked whether the reported workaround was a “conflict of interest,” Musk vehemently disagreed and said the focus was in the wrong place.
“First of all, you should be questioning why there are racist laws in South Africa,” he said. “That’s the first problem. That’s what you should be attacking. It’s improper for there to be racist laws in South Africa.
“The whole idea with what Nelson Mandela — who was a great man — proposed, was that all races should be on an equal footing in South Africa. That’s the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws, which is utterly wrong.”
Musk went on to say that “there are now 140 laws in South Africa that … basically give strong preference to you if you’re a black South African … and now I’m in this absurd situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a license to operate in Starlink because I’m not black.”
When he asked the moderator point-blank whether she thought those rules were fair, she said she thought “those rules were designed to bring about an era of more economic equality in South Africa, and it looks like the government has found a way around those rules for you.”
Well, as Semafor noted in a February piece as the Starlink deal was taking shape, Musk gets a few things wrong but is essentially correct.
After the end of apartheid, the first general election overwhelmingly chose Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress party — which set about enacting what it called the Black Economic Empowerment policy.
In 2003, with the African National Congress still in control — indeed, it has been the only party in control of the country since apartheid ended — but with a different president, Thabo Mbeki, this was amended to something called the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, or BBBEE, policy. For the sake of simplicity, however, the policy is usually known simply as BEE.
Going through the ins and outs of BEE would take some time, but the basics are this: Elon Musk can own as many companies as he wants in South Africa … provided, under the law, that 30 percent of local ownership is black.
Musk wasn’t willing to play by those rules for the reasons laid out in his Qatar speech — which is why Ramaphosa’s government, Semafor reported, wasn’t even going to bother trying to enforce them in his case:
South Africa’s government last year spoke to the billionaire about investing in his country of birth after Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, approached the government over securing regulatory approval. Under the country’s Black economic empowerment policy, introduced nearly 30 years ago to reduce apartheid-era inequality, at least 30% of the South African operation of any Musk-owned company such as Tesla or Space X would have to be sold or donated to Black locals.
Government officials have discussed allowing Musk’s companies to sidestep these rules by using an “equity equivalent” option, such as social investment, according to the people. They said this approach, which could include free internet connection to government schools and police stations, was first touted after President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Musk on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
This plan, to be fair, is not a whole heck of a lot different than how BEE works in practice, although very different in how it works in theory.
Of course, the idea is that by forcing multinationals to allow black investment in their firms — and for small- and medium-sized businesses in South Africa to allow sufficient equity to the majority black population — the lingering economic injustices of apartheid could be rectified on a quicker timescale.
What really happened — which should not surprise anyone familiar with these sorts of equity schemes when they’re applied in the emerging world — is that it created a class of ANC-connected grifters who made sure companies were in compliance. They got rich off of it, while the vast majority of black South Africans are no better off — and arguably worse — than they would have been without BEE.
From a 2024 BizNews article on the actual effects of the policy:
One of the most harmful outcomes of BEE is the culture of favoritism it has created. The policy gives bureaucrats and government officials the power to hand out contracts and tenders based on BEE scores. This has resulted in businesses spending more time navigating regulations and seeking political connections than focusing on merit, innovation, and efficiency.
This has led to the rise of “tenderpreneurs” – individuals who use their BEE status to secure lucrative government contracts, often without the necessary skills, qualifications or experience to carry out the work. As Thomas Sowell said in his critique of race-based policies, “policies intended to help the disadvantaged… have all too often simply created new problems, such as rent-seeking and political patronage.” In South Africa, BEE has allowed politically connected individuals to exploit the system for personal gain, rather than uplifting the majority.
The result is substandard service delivery, with contracts being awarded not to the most qualified, but to those with the right political connections. This mismanagement has resulted in wasted resources, collapsing infrastructure and unending inefficiency.
Again, without getting into the exact figures, this is wildly unsurprising — which is why Ramaphosa likely wants to quietly negotiate agreements that side-step this with Musk and probably other tech giants, particularly in Asia, where this kind of inefficient palm-greasing doesn’t go over well.
However, there’s another faction in the ANC’s current coalition government: the Economic Freedom Fighters. You may remember one of their leaders, Julius Malema, from singing this charming ditty at a rally in 2023:
???????? Para quem não viu o vídeo, aí está.
“KILL THE BOER” (Mate os fazendeiros brancos).
Um estádio inteiro cantando junto.
A mídia mente, mas nós mostramos a verdade. pic.twitter.com/EMcMGPWY8a— Rafael Fontana (@RafaelFontana) May 22, 2025
Just in case you didn’t catch the meaning, “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” essentially means slaughter white farmers and expropriate their land. And while the EFF has only called legislatively for expropriating the land, they were disappointed when Ramaphosa’s ANC signed a law in January that only allowed expropriation of the land, not effectuated it. (According to the BBC, the EFF called it a “legislative cop-out.”)
And while the EFF is nowhere near power — yet — Semafor noted that this deal was one they looked to make hay off of. (Or, if they were Republicans, perhaps they would be “pouncing” on it):
The Economic Freedom Fighters, a radical leftist party formed as an offshoot of the African National Congress, would almost certainly criticize any attempt to attract Musk’s companies by circumventing Black empowerment rules. Its leader, Julius Malema, has been embroiled in a war of words with Musk in the last few days. The billionaire posted a video on Sunday, in which the EFF leader appeared to condone violence against white people, and wrote: “Immediate sanctions for Malema and declaration of him as an international criminal!”
The EFF, in a statement, said “Musk has assumed the role of a global billionaire maniac” as part of a “general hysteria” that has overtaken the US. It said Musk “must be viewed as an imperialist who seeks to undermine the economic and political sovereignty of South Africa through sanctions.” The EFF also accused him of having “captured” the US presidency, saying he has “weaponized his office as an instrument to pursue his business interests globally.”
So there’s that. And they were particularly unhappy, as well:
The EFF’s Statement Rejecting Malatsi’s Anti-Transformation ICT Policy Direction and Capitulation to US Pressure
-This policy is tailor-made to allow Starlink access to operate in South Africa without meeting the mandatory 30% local ownership requirement as per the Electronic… pic.twitter.com/X7kqfHMlyZ
— Economic Freedom Fighters (@EFFSouthAfrica) May 23, 2025
It’s unclear where the exemptions stand at the moment, particularly after the contentious meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa days after this news broke. However, if it does not go through or Musk also refuses to work with the “equity equivalent” option — which is really just the same thing as greasing the palms of government-connected functionaries without having them hanging around the company — then, no, as a white man, he would not be allowed to own and operate Starlink in South Africa.
But again: Most companies are willing to play ball with the South African government on BEE restrictions, even if the ownership or participation is nominal and/or government-connected. It’s also worth noting that hurdles like these aren’t necessarily unique in the world at large, although South Africa’s racial ownership quotas are oddly specific in this respect.
So Musk isn’t disallowed from operating Starlink just “because I’m not black,” as he stated. It’s because he’s not black and he’s making a point about his native land’s onerous BEE policy — a position that’s wholly sensible given the general failure of BEE to achieve significant positive results for anyone but cronyist middlemen. While there is significant nuance to his remarks, they are essentially correct.
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