Era of South African-born oligarchs in US: How Elon Musk's influence is reshaping global politics
Donald MacKay
America is being (not so) secretly run by a cabal of South Africans (Elon Musk, Patrick Soon-Shiong, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel (ok born in Germany and grew up in Namibia, but close enough). Donald Trump thinks he is the most powerful human, and perhaps for a hot minute he will be, but four years from now he will be gone. He would have created some chaos, as is the way of American presidents, but I don't think his influence will be anywhere near as lasting as we all think.
Musk on the other hand has already changed the world in everlasting ways and his gamble to back Trump will ensure his influence lingers for generations. The First Bro is an unusual oligarch because he has actually earned his money solving important problems.
Roman Abramovich, by comparison, sold rubber ducks, (bath toys, not boats, I truly hope) from his Moscow apartment before buying Sibneft for $100 million (R1.9 billion). No one quite knows where the R100m came from.
Musk made EVs fun and in the process has given (China?) the world the electric vehicle industry. SpaceX dramatically dropped the cost of space travel and most importantly, showed us that cool chopstick thingy, which grabbed the space ship as it landed. If Musk has his way, Neuralink will have us searching the internet using just our minds. And of course, X (formerly Twitter), perhaps the best investment Musk ever made. Without Musk buying Twitter, I'm not sure Trump would be in the White House, a purchase I originally thought was simply stupid.
A rich boy with nothing better to do with his money, but a week after the election results were announced, Musk's worth had risen by $70bn (almost double the $44bn he paid for Twitter in October 2022). By the end of December, a month after the elections, his wealth had risen by $203bn, reaching a total net worth of $486bn.
It is hard to get your head around this kind of money. South Africa's total debt is $311bn. Musk could settle our full debt and have $175bn over, which would still make him more than ten times wealthier than Johann Rupert, South Africa's wealthiest person. Musk's donation of $238m to Trump's campaign is a mere 0.05% of his wealth. This is the equivalent of someone who retires with R10m in savings, donating R5 000. If you earn R100 000 per month, this is you donating R50. It is nothing, barely aspiring to be a rounding error yet this almost rounding error gave the world Donald Trump.
The kind of policies this can buy has never been witnessed by the world before. Controlling the world's largest free speech platform, Megaphone-X, the First Troll has repeatedly kakked out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (RIP) and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not prosecuting the Pakistani grooming gangs, even though he oversaw 35 grooming gang convictions.
Musk has promoted the holocaust denying the far-right Alternative for Germany in Germany and has called for Tommy Robinson, almost a political prisoner as Musk sees it, to be released from jail. Robinson is in prison for 18 months for contempt of court after losing a defamation case against a young Syrian refugee and refusing to pay the fine. Musk wants Robinson to take over Nigel Farage's Reform UK.
A minute ago, in December 2024, Musk and Farage were chilling at Mar-a-Lago and in January 2025, Musk felt "Farage doesn't have what it takes" to lead Reform UK. Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), also going by Andrew McMaster, Paul Harris, (Ernst Röhm?), and Wayne King, was arrested in 2005 for assaulting a police officer, led a football brawl in 2011 of over 100 fans, and founded the English Defence League, which held violent demonstrations that often “descended into violence and racist and Islamophobic chanting”. He has incited riots across the UK, leading to attacks on mosques and burning of police vehicles.
I don't know if Musk is buying every bit of mischief being sold, but he is in the unique position of being able to amplify these voices, a role he has taken to with enthusiasm. Recall what happened in 2010 with the Arab Spring when Twitter was a far more innocent place, or Facebook in Myanmar in 2012, which saw thousands killed and 730 000 Rohingya Muslims displaced to Bangladesh. I am certainly not blaming to social media companies for what happened, but they very effectively amplified the messages and changed whole countries. Now imagine that power, but with real intent (no I don't think Musk will attempt to lead a genocide, to be clear).
TikTok has just been turned off in the US and won't be switched on until an American company can take over its American operations. Trump might lift the ban for 90 days, but I'm pretty sure a deal will need to be done or TikTok will be out of America and 170 million Americans will need to find something else to do for six hours a day. I would not be surprised if the First Bro ends up with TikTok, anti-trust laws be damned. What happens when you give the world's richest man access to obscene amounts of political power and also control of two of the world's most powerful megaphones, with all the associated user data? We are about to find out.
Donald MacKay is founder and chief executive of XA Global Trade Advisors. MacKay has been advising local and foreign companies on global trade issues for more than two decades. X handle: XA_advisors; email: donald@ xagta.com; website: xagta.com. The views in this column are independent of Business Report and Independent Media.
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