The News
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s government plans to intensify discussions with billionaire Elon Musk about investing in his country of birth.
President Cyril Ramaphosa recently said he had a call with the world’s richest man after Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service, approached the government about securing regulatory approval.
The president is looking forward to more talks with Musk as the government cranks up its efforts to attract investment, Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya told Semafor Africa. “The chat was not only about Starlink, it also covered a broader set of investments that could include Tesla and Space X,” said Magwenya.
Starlink delivers broadband internet from a network of more than 5,000 satellites deployed by sister company SpaceX. It currently operates in more than a dozen African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Malawi, and Botswana. But it has failed to secure regulatory approval in a number of countries, including South Africa.
Ramaphosa, addressing reporters in Pretoria last week, said he told Musk: “I want you to come home and invest here.” The president added that he and Musk “are going to have a further discussion.”
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The Ramaphosa-led government has a dedicated program to cut red tape, and improve the ease of doing business as a way to attract investment.
A deal with a high-profile investor like Musk could help ride the wave of positive sentiment gripping South Africa in the aftermath of the May election where there was no outright winner, prompting the formation of a coalition government.
The country’s currency and stock markets have strengthened as has consumer confidence. Ratings agency Fitch last week said the coalition government had reduced the political uncertainty associated with the election. Fitch, in a statement on Friday, said it expects the government to continue its reform programme, “which will contribute to a modestly increasing real GDP growth.”
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Elon Musk will seem a strange bedfellow for the African National Congress, the party of liberation against apartheid. Musk, who left the country at 17 during apartheid, rarely talks about Africa or South Africa in his daily tirade of posts on X.. But last July he joined far right commentators in spreading misinformation on the platform he owns, by sharing posts and claims that white farmers were undergoing genocide in South Africa.
And in one post, in response to apartheid era anti-white farmer song by firebrand politician Julius Malema he called out President Ramaphosa asking: “They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa. @CyrilRamaphosa, why do you say nothing?”
In a essay about his Walter Isaacson-penned biography last November, the South Africa-based writer Eve Fairbanks called out Musk for perpetuating an exaggerated myth about the past and daily reality of white South Africans: “South Africa is a deeply misunderstood country, and Musk’s statements thicken the clouds of misconceptions that swirl around it,” Fairbanks wrote.
