Why Elon Musk can’t stand bureaucrats and loves to stir the pot

To Americans — and probably many others as well — Elon Musk’s manner and behavior are something of an enigma. Why, they ask, does a billionaire act like him? Why does he have the strange humor he does? "Why does he say things like that?" they ask in frustration.

Many of the Tesla CEO’s comments do seem purposely designed simply to be silly, and thus to show how much he enjoys silliness. On the very day before his takeover of Twitter was finalized, he renamed himself “Chief Twit” on his Twitter bio, a title he later changed to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” after he was deluged with grievances. And he loves digging at the norms of polite society — “stirring the pot,” as they say in South Africa. In November 2021, he tweeted, “At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne,” then added, “It gives me solace.” He even challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight.

Musk’s humor is deeply South African, where bluntness is the norm, even among women, and offending others isn’t a major concern.

People ask, “How can such a prominent person do such absurd things? Doesn’t he care that they cause people to misunderstand him, urge others to ignore him and denigrate him?" I’ve heard people try to explain this in all manner of ways: that he’s clueless about people because of his autism, that he’s adolescent at base, that he just loves to shock people.

I’ve never had those reactions, and the reason is simple: That’s what people have been saying about me for years. Like me, I think it’s simply that he doesn’t give a fig if people think he’s being ridiculous because he enjoys what he’s doing much too much.

Now, I don’t claim to be Elon Musk’s clone, or even to know him well enough to write this from a position of knowledge. I’ve never interviewed him — not that he’d let me — and I’ve never met him, though he lives not 20 miles from me in Austin, Texas. I certainly lack his genius, and I’m not a billionaire, or even faintly rich. I’m just a retired academic who now writes fiction about the later Roman Empire.

I feel an intense familiarity with his words and manner of speaking, so much so that they never surprise me. My instincts guide me in understanding their meaning. If we share any similarity, it stems from our origin: We both grew up in South Africa during the Apartheid era.

Why does this matter? Because culture matters. Culture matters because it shapes what you accept as normal behavior and how you perceive humor, even though it doesn’t change your innate talents and tendencies. This cultural influence is especially significant in South Africa, where the history and dynamics differ greatly from other countries colonized by Europeans.

South Africa’s white culture is a blend of two major settler waves. The first wave consisted of Dutch settlers in the late 17th century. The second wave, in the early 19th century, included British veterans from the Napoleonic Wars and their families. These groups set the cultural mold, characterized by the hardiness of rural Dutch explorers and the resilience of battle-worn British soldiers. Later immigrants added to this mix, but the foundational mindset remained.

No white settlers believed they could completely replace the native populations, which included powerful and warlike tribes like the Xhosa, Sotho, Ndebele, and Zulu. As a result, the prevailing attitude never involved expecting an eventual triumph. Instead, people learned to endure the present, accepting its contradictions. Life was insecure and dangerous, with survival reserved for the toughest individuals. This environment left little room for softer values, fostering a culture where gallows humor thrived amid constant challenges.

If Musk fixates on the idea of settling on Mars, it’s because, like many white South Africans, he views the present as too unstable to trust.

Consider next the kind of rule the Afrikaners imposed during the era of apartheid. Few who do not know the country understand how bureaucratic it was. The Afrikaners admired the values we loosely categorize as “Germanic” and imposed them on the country. Everyone carried an identity document that encapsulated your entire life and designated your assigned race. If you were black, you also carried something called a “pass,” which stated where you were allowed to be. Television was excluded from the country until long after other countries had it because the nationalists who ruled saw it, rightly, as a danger to social order. It showed too much.

In this context, you had only two legitimate options: either submit, accepting everything as the natural order, or rebel against what was imposed. Rebellion didn’t necessarily mean joining the African National Congress, but it meant developing a disdain for bureaucracy and questioning widely accepted ideas.

Humor and mockery became key coping mechanisms. A popular comedy radio program featured a recurring character: an unintelligent Afrikaner policeman, who would ask, in broken English, “Did you got a license?” It was silly, but it resonated with everyone because it reflected reality. We were laughing at ourselves, acknowledging that as “whites,” we were complicit in maintaining the controlled society. We recognized the emptiness of the system, making silly, self-deprecating humor our main outlet.

Does this not sound like Elon Musk? Who else resists bureaucracy or gives the proverbial finger to any official trying to dictate terms? His dedication to free speech runs so deep that he spent billions to acquire Twitter to protect it.

I believe this attitude stems from the tight controls over expression in South Africa. Many of us who grew up in that environment share similar reactions. I feel a deep frustration whenever I encounter bureaucratic nonsense, and I despise being told what to do.

In June 2023, Musk posted a meme mocking a pregnant woman asking if her child is a boy or girl. The doctor replies, “we’ll let the kindergarten teacher decide,” echoing the South African government’s practice of determining whether someone was white or nonwhite. After 300 years of energetic miscegenation, many who were considered “white” barely looked the part, if at all. My own family exemplifies this.

We recognized the lies behind the narratives we were fed, from the so-called equality in Bantustans to the pretense of respecting equality under state power. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complained about issues with her Twitter account after clashing with Musk, he called it “a naked abuse of power” by the platform’s new owner. That remark felt like a classic South African joke. We understood abuse of power all too well, and laughter became our means of coping with it.

Musk’s humor is deeply South African, where bluntness is the norm, even among women, and offending others isn’t a major concern. People are expected to be tough enough to handle it, and there’s a special satisfaction in cutting down the pretentious. When Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris and dubbed herself a childless cat lady, Musk posted: “Fine Taylor ... you win ... I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” Those eager to prove their enlightened and feminist views found it crude and tasteless. Every South African I know found it hilarious.

As for why Musk shifted from a conventional liberal stance to supporting MAGA, I, a former South African “white,” would ask: What took him so long? I think he initially didn’t care enough about politics to get involved. But when he lost one of his sons to the latest trendy ideology, everything changed. And that’s all it took.