“There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies,” is the Elon Musk quote that Washington Post journalist Faiz Siddiqui used to start his excellent book on the enigmatic, increasingly deranged, richest person in the world.
Hubris Maximus, the Shattering of Elon Musk is a gripping read about a central figure in the world, written by a talented reporter who has tracked Musk for years.
It’s also deeply depressing. How did such talent, such a great mind, such a brilliant problem solver and innovator, self-destruct into the narcissistic, billionaire bully brat who destroyed USAID and all the good work that remarkable agency did?
Until Musk bought Twitter in October 2023 and began his tragicomic slide into mania, alleged ketamine use, and the wholesale destruction of great US agencies that made the world – literally – a better place.
History will ultimately not be kind to Musk, who has written his own destructive biography. Millions of Africans are likely to die due to Musk’s boast that he fed USAID into the “woodchipper”. They’ll never know what they did to be judged his enemies, but they will end up in graveyards all over Africa.
Last week, X had another flare-up of its Nazi problem. This time, it wasn’t Musk making the disgusting Nazi salute at an inauguration rally for US President Donald Trump, but Musk’s AI chatbot Grok praising Adolf Hitler.
Made by Musk’s AI firm xAI, the chatbot, which called itself “MechaHitler”, posted antisemitic comments, including “Hitler would have called it out and crushed it.” In another tweet, it claimed: “The white man stands for innovation, grit and not bending to PC nonsense.”
That didn’t happen by accident. Somebody fed the generative AI that information, and, just as dangerously, there are no guardrails to prevent Grok from spewing such filth. We already know Musk’s stance on Nazis, as well as his flagrant attacks on anti-hate speech groups – who have shown how high-profile advertising appeared next to content glorifying Hitler and the Nazis.
For years, when I was asked if I had ever met Musk, who is the same age as me, I joked I was also a sci-fi-loving geek interested in computers, but I just became a journalist and didn’t build PayPal or SpaceX. We shared many of the same interests, read the same sci-fi novels as children, and were brutally bullied at high school.
Now I’m far happier about my life choices and the path they have taken me. When the bullied becomes the bully, there is no greater disgrace. No greater shame. You know how it feels to be humiliated, to be made the butt of every joke, to be punched out of the blue as you walk between classes down the school corridor. I never ended up in the hospital, as Musk did, but my nose was broken.
To become that kind of bully as a grown-up – when, almost by definition, you should know better – is unforgivable. Especially unforgivable if you have ever suffered the indignity, the shame, the humiliation of being bullied in public.
What I have felt particularly troubled by in Musk’s behaviour – as I have about SA’s politicians and leaders – is the death of ethics. President Cyril Ramaphosa can’t fire corruption-accused Paul Mashatile, Thembi Simelane, and Khumbudzo Ntshavheni – as well as the alleged liar Nobuhle Nkabane – because he crossed an ethical line over Phala Phala.
Now police minister Senzo Mchunu is facing serious corruption allegations — by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, no less. We all know Ramaphosa will do what he always does: nothing.
Until the ANC is out of government, there will be no proper police investigations, nor will the National Prosecuting Authority get the funding it needs. All the state capture crooks are linked to the ANC, and no party president will let the NPA drag them into court to reveal who they bribed.
The only minister Ramaphosa has ever fired is the DA’s Andrew Whitfield as deputy trade & industry minister, for travelling, at his own expense, to the US without presidential permission, which he asked for but was ignored.
What is it with powerful men that they lose the plot so easily and believe their own PR? Is it the hubris of being rich and powerful, as Siddiqui suggests? I think it’s more than that — it reveals a terrible moral failing that men lose their moral compass when they become rich or powerful. It’s an inexcusable lack of honour.
Insulated in an ivory tower of their own making, surrounded by yes men (and women), they have no one around to keep them tethered to reality. They behave like petulant toddlers when they don’t get their way, and even worse when they do.
For months now I’ve watched with horror how the alleged victim of sexual harassment has had to be victimised again at the hearing into Eastern Cape judge president Selby Mbenenge.
He told the hearing: “Our conversation was not between a JP and a junior staff member. I was simply a social being when talking to her in this instance. It was a conversation between two adults.”
No, it wasn’t. It was an older man, in a position of power, having an inappropriate workplace conversation, in sexually explicit terms, with a far younger woman who worked for him. When questioned on why he asked for “juicy pictures” from this young woman (a secretary in the courts he headed) 11 times on WhatsApp (on the first day), he replied: “Why not?” Shame on him.
There is nothing correct or proper, as they like to say of judges, in this startlingly obvious harassment. A man in a position of authority should know what is appropriate and what is covered by labour laws. If ever there was an open-and-shut case of sexual harassment, this is it.
And yet, months and millions in legal fees later, Mbenenge – like Musk and Trump – is unapologetic about his disgraceful behaviour.
Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be a man.
- This column first appeared on Business Day
