I used to like Elon Musk, a lot. I also used to admire him for what he has been able to achieve at his age – especially having been born in South Africa. I wanted him to succeed in his endeavours because I thought the technologies his companies produce could be good for human progress.
In many ways they are - but he is not.
In recent times there has been significant public debate about Starlink and Communication and Digital Technologies minister, Solly Malatsi’s decision to use the equity equivalents instrument instead of a BEE shareholding. This is far less important to me, and if anyone reading this think what I say below is about BEE, they will be sorely disappointed.
I don’t like Elon Musk anymore, not because he is white, unpleasant to have a beer with or ugly. A person can be any of these and still be worthy of granting an operating license to because none of these things harm society in and of themselves. I have far more serious concerns about Starlink that I also have about the way Musk has reshaped his X platform, formerly Twitter.
To be clear I also have no difficulty with Musk being a political donor in the US. Countless businesspeople are donors in the US and here in South Africa. I may not like that there are no limits to how much one person can donate in the US but that is a matter for US voters and their representatives to do something about.
I am one of those who are vehemently opposed to licensing Starlink in South Africa. Here are my reasons:
First, Elon Musk is a proven purveyor of dangerous misinformation and disinformation. He uses his X platform for this purpose and has taken active measures to ensure that the fact-checking capacity the platform use to have has been taken away. He claimed, falsely, that the fact checkers were limiting freedom of speech. He is intelligent and knows this is not true.
To some, disinformation may not matter but it does especially when it is used to sow discord in society. For example, let us say someone posts a video of a white person assaulting a black person which is from another country but claims it happened in South Africa recently. With our history such could easily inflame racial tensions and even violence.
Quickly debunking such is important for social order our nation-building project. Removing the capacity to inform citizens that such is untrue, and removing harmful content from the platform is a good thing. Elon Musk does not think so. And so, his platform, which is used by billions across the world, is a cesspit of disinformation and hate speech. He revels in it.
Secondly, for democracy to work as it should, people need accurate information so that they can exercise sound political judgment. This is why news media platforms take fact-checking seriously and will even apologise if they publish inaccurate information. Anyone who sets out to spread false information themselves, and weaponizes a powerful platform like X for the same purpose, is not a friend of democracy.
We have seen how this has harmed South Africa through Musk’s actions. I am grateful to News24.com for exposing the role of certain South Africans who worked in collaboration with other spreaders of disinformation to spread the lie of white genocide through farm murders. But the active spreading of that lie has significantly informed decisions by the Trump administration that are potentially harmful to South Africans and the country itself.
For example, it potentially places the exports of the very farmers spreaders of this farm purport to want to protect. When and if the US government sanctions South Africa, imposes ill-informed tariffs or cancels its participation in the Africa Growth Opportunities Act provisions, the harm will be spread across millions of South Africans.
Again, Musk knows this very well, but persists anyway.
Third, he is impulsive and abusive with countries that he considers weak and uses the very technology they pay him for to strong-arm them. He has repeatedly threatened to cut his Starlink service to the Ukrainian military to the extent that Poland, which also relies on Starlink to defend itself against Russian aggression, is seeking alternatives.
In July last year Reuters reported that Musk ordered his staff at Starlink to cut the service to the Ukrainian military when they were in the middle of a critical counter-offensive to repel Russia’s occupation army. He denied the charge, but the reporting was strongly sourced with names and times, and quoting actual communication.
This is not just worrying from a security perspective but in terms of how contracts are supposed to work. A service provider is contractually bound to provide that service and not act on the political or other whims of its founder or shareholder. It makes them unreliable and a risk to do business with.
Finally, Musk has actively promoted white supremacist ideas, including giving the Nazi salute. Call me naïve and idealistic but I still think character matters, but apparently to some people it really doesn’t. He has also spread racist lies about black and brown immigrants in the US and elsewhere. Such are harmful to the communities concerned and cause deep political and social divisions that he feels no responsibility for.
Given the racism he has enabled on his platforms, I can say with near certainty that Elon Musk does not care about black children in some village in SA. If he did, he would not have cancelled aid through USAID to millions of starving children across our continent when he was head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the beginning of the Trump administration.
Surely, surely even the most incorrigible among us cannot possibly believe that someone who has no problem starving children and refugees otherwise cares very deeply about South African children without access to the internet.
In recent days the US government announced an integrated defence technological platform involving Grok and Starlink. No sane country would willy nilly accept technology from a company so deeply entwined with the politics and defence strategies of a country that keeps threatening South Africa based on egregious lies.
For these and other reasons I don’t have enough space to discuss here, the case for Starlink has not yet been properly made. If anything, Elon Musk’s record is full of serious red flags that far too many loud voices are willing to ignore simply because they hate BEE. This is like cutting your nose to spite your face.
Mr Songezo, thank you for your prompt perspective on this matter. I agree with you to a certain extent. Yes, Starlink is disruptive. I agree with your argument regarding the risks of disinformation. However, disruption does not equate to monopolisation of information, nor does it imply an inherent pursuit of misinformation or disinformation. The Starlink debate should be grounded in its role as access infrastructure, and not content platforms such as X. To be clear, Starlink does not curate news, amplify narratives, or algorithmically shape public discourse. Disinformation risks already exist across established terrestrial networks and are primarily driven by social media platforms, which remain the real vectors of misinformation. If sovereignty were genuinely about information control, our government/state would be far more aggressive in regulating content platforms rather than focusing on satellite internet service providers.
I agree with your position that for a democracy to flourish, accurate and accessible information must be available to the masses to enable sound political judgement. This argument, however, supports the case for Starlink rather than undermining it. The expansion of affordable, high-speed internet access from rural to urban areas strengthens the conditions necessary for informed civic participation. In this regard, the company reported offer to “provide free, uncapped, high-speed internet to approximately 5 000 rural schools” with an estimated value of R500 million, alongside a proposed telecom infrastructure rollout valued at approximately R2 billion, is developmentally significant. Investments of this nature align directly with the objectives of the South African Smart Cities Framework, particularly the pillar on strong digital capabilities.
Regards to competition, or contracts, South Africa already exhibits high concentration within the telecommunications sector, notably among dominant incumbents such as Vodacom and MTN. Starlink does not introduce market concentration; it challenges it. Its service model does not replace fibre, mobile networks, or fixed wireless infrastructure. Rather, its cost structure and technological design make it complementary, especially in underserved and rural areas where traditional infrastructure rollout has been slow or commercially unviable. As such, it is unlikely that South Africa would become solely reliant on Starlink in a manner that would allow the service to be politically weaponised.
Sovereignty in 2026 should not be understood primarily in terms of physical cables or infrastructure. It is better defined through licensing jurisdiction, lawful interception frameworks, and robust data governance rules. If the South African state is unable to impose these regulatory conditions on a foreign service provider, this reflects a challenge of state capacity rather than an inherent threat posed by the technology itself.
A weird collection of entitlement falsehoods dressed up as the sabotage of 'nationbuilding' etc.
Envy on full display.