Why Elon Musk can’t have his way – A conversation with Khusela Diko

I truly did not want to spend my Monday morning talking about Elon Musk. But after yet another weekend-long meltdown about the country he was born in, here we are.

A quick disclaimer. There is nothing new about the Musk-Starlink drama. Starlink wants to operate in South Africa. South African law requires any company seeking a licence for network services to comply with local ownership rules, including 30% local ownership. No, South Africa is not the only country with laws like this. Musk refuses to comply, wants the law changed for him, and has once again gone on a rant about it.

So that is that.

But what triggered the latest tantrum?

Clayson Monyela, the deputy director-general for public diplomacy at the department of international relations and cooperation, tweeted a meme of a child looking completely unimpressed at an extravagant ice cream bowl covered in sparklers.

“Elon Musk watching the more than 600 USA companies investing in South Africa, complying with South African laws and thriving. Zero drama,” he captioned it.

I chuckled when I saw that. It was classic South African humour. Dry, petty and funny. But it clearly got under Musk’s skin.

“Stop being such a fucking racist, you asshole,” the billionaire replied.

Then he went on a familiar bender, recycling old lies and disinformation.

He claimed it was absurd for him to “surrender” 30% of his business in order to operate in South Africa.

Then he revived the old white crosses video falsely presented as evidence of murdered white farmers.

Oh, and he also claimed that the South African government gets kickbacks from current service providers and sets the rates, and that Starlink cannot enter the market because he refuses to pay bribes.

And when that was not enough, he upped the ante.

“All the politicians in South Africa who push their viciously racist laws should be sanctioned, barred from travel, declared criminals and their international assets seized,” he posted.

Then he repeated another old lie.

“South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed even though I was born there, simply because I am not black. We were offered many times the opportunity to bribe our way to a license by pretending that a black guy runs Starlink SA, but I have refused to do so on principle. Racism should not be rewarded no matter to which race it is applied.”

He went on and on, calling South African politicians racists who should be shown no respect anywhere in the world.

“Shame on the racist politicians in South Africa. They should be shown no respect whatsoever anywhere in the world and shunned for being unashamedly racist.”

Responding to a Bloomberg article about Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana not attending a G20 finance chiefs meeting in Washington, he wrote:

“Good, South Africa should be shunned until it stops its extreme anti-white and anti-Asian racism. It’s time for severe sanctions against South Africa.”

No matter how many times the government has tried to explain this, Musk appears determined to ignore the facts.

On the latest episode of The Debrief which you should absolutely watch on YouTube, subscribe to and share, I spoke to Khusela Diko, ANC MP and member of Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies.

She said that even though Musk is South African, he is blind to the country’s daily realities and is “adamant that the laws of our country must be bent for him and him alone.”

“Let me explain it like this. So there’s a license that you require to provide network services okay. So this license would be required by the likes of Vodacom by the likes of the MTN Starlink. But also Starlink’s competitors like Amazon because they need a license. This license does not apply, for example, to Microsoft. It does not apply to Dell because they don’t have a license. So that 30% B is linked to the license. Why that was done in that way is because that license, you then have to get allocated spectrum, which is a finite resource. It’s like minerals. It’s like water. It’s like, you know, land. So you can’t have such a strategic resource in foreign hands where there’s no local participation in ownership.”

It is a fascinating conversation.

We get into where the ANC stands on Musk, what is happening with Communications Minister Solly Malatsi, who is from the DA, and what options are actually on the table.

We also go deeper into the broader question of transformation and broad-based black economic empowerment, which is really what this fight is about, no matter how loudly Musk tries to make it about himself.

Here is the thing. The ANC is unlikely to back down on this.

But that is not all we discussed.

The conversation also turns to Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi and the explosive allegations he made about police capture. Diko sits on the ad hoc committee probing those claims, and her insights on what is unfolding behind the scenes are worth listening to.

Watch the full episode and let me know what you think.