Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, one of the capital cities of South Africa,[7][8] and was baptized into the Anglican church.[9] Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.[10][11] His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa.[12][13][14] His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.[15][16] Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, (born 1972) and a younger sister, Tosca, (born 1974).[14][17]
Musk's family was wealthy during his youth.[16] His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, with his children sharing their father's dislike of apartheid.[7] His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an adventurous American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane.[18][19][20] After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk mostly lived with his father.[10] Musk later regretted his decision because he has become estranged from his father.[21] He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.[18][22]
In his biography of Musk, Ashlee Vance described Musk as an awkward and introverted child.[23] When Musk was age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from his Commodore VIC-20 user manual.[24] At age twelve, he sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500
