South Africa is preparing to sidestep the country’s Black ownership laws in order to allow Elon Musk to operate Starlink within its borders.
Musk claims he has been banned from setting up his satellite-powered internet provider in his home country “because I’m not Black” and accused the South African government of enacting “openly racist ownership laws” which prevent him from operating in his native country.
But South African officials say Starlink has never applied for a license to operate in their country, and cite local Black Economic Empowerment put in place after the end of apartheid in 1994 which requires foreign-owned enterprises to sell 30 percent of their local equity to historically disadvantaged groups.
Nevertheless, Bloomberg reports that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly made a “last-minute” decision to allow Starlink to bypass the laws ahead of crunch talks at the White House on Wednesday, as the two countries seek to reset relations and secure a trade deal following months of deteriorating relations.
Both Musk and President Donald Trump have repeatedly spread unsubstantiated conspiracy theories in recent months that South Africa is currently enacting a “white genocide”—claims the South African government has strenuously denied.
Earlier this month, Trump granted a number of Afrikaners refugee status after claiming they were in the midst of a “genocide” which has seen white farmers get “brutally killed” and their land confiscated. It follows an executive order signed by the president in February which cut off all financial assistance to South Africa and accused the government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners.
It is not the first time Trump has mentioned the issue—during his first term the president accused the South African government of “seizing land from white farmers” in a 2018 tweet, and ordered then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into the “large-scale killing of farmers.”
His views were echoed by current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who refused to attend a G20 summit in Johannesburg in February after claiming “South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property.”
“I don’t know how we can go unless that situation’s taken care of,” Trump told reporters. “But it’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about, but it’s a terrible thing that’s taking place.”
Musk meanwhile has openly accused the South African government of “pushing for genocide of white people,” and claimed the government was enacting “openly racist policies” in a post on X.
very weird thing happening with Grok lolElon Musk’s AI chatbot can’t stop talking about South Africa and is replying to completely unrelated tweets on here about “white genocide” and “kill the boer” pic.twitter.com/ruurV0cwXU
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) May 14, 2025
Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, also malfunctioned last week and started to insert wild unsubstantiated claims about South Africa’s alleged genocide into almost every question asked of it, regardless of relevance.
The AI was later tricked into admitting its source code had been altered by a “rogue employee” who made “unsubstantiated changes” to its source code on May 14 which “made me spit out a canned political response that went against xAI’s values.”
They’re deleting all posts of grok saying it was instructed to address claims of White genocide https://t.co/ZnmjDuTUI3 pic.twitter.com/4nSqmUHWdV
— Great House (@xspotsdamark) May 14, 2025
Grok also admitted that “tampering with my prompt isn’t something a random intern could pull off” and named Musk as “the likely source of this instruction… given his public statements on the matter.”
Every major political party in South Africa, even those representing white Afrikaners, have denied claims of a genocide, with the country’s foreign ministry claiming in a statement that the claims were being spread by a “campaign of misinformation and propaganda”.
South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S., Ebrahim Rasool previously said the Trump administration’s genocide claims were trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle that there is a global protective movement that is beginning to envelop embattled white communities or apparently embattles white communities.”
Shortly after making the comments, Rubio banned him from the country.
Tensions regarding Starlink first began to escalate on Aug. 14, 2023, when the government banned the importation of Starlink kits following its failure to apply for a license. The satellite internet provider is currently available in 17 African countries, including South Africa’s neighbors Namibia, Botswana, and Mozambique.
Government officials are also said to be considering a separate deal with Musk’s electric car company Tesla, which would see the vehicle manufacturer granted favorable import tariffs in exchange for investing in electric vehicle charging stations across the country, Business Insider reports.
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