As South Africa battles to keep a good name on the global stage after a barrage of attacks from US President Donald Trump and 'shadow president' Elon Musk, a new theory has emerged about the Tesla owner.

It also shines a new light on Musk's sharp pivot into politics and his swift and seemingly unstoppable rise to power.

Journalist Chris McGreal told independent news programme, Democracy Now! that there exists a 'PayPal mafia' that is linked to apartheid SA. He claimed that the founders of the digital payment company who grew up in the country, including Musk, have been weaving a near century-old web.

Other co-founders of the company are Peter Thiel who is German-born but was brought to SA, David Sacks who was born in the country and Reolof Botha, the grandson of Pik Botha, who was the last foreign minister of apartheid SA.

The X owner's fortune ballooned in 2002 after he sold PayPal to eBay for about $1.5 billion. He entered the technosphere as a fervent supporter of green energy preaching the need to invest in technology for a better world.

However, that may have been a calculated ploy to get a foot into the door insinuated McGreal.

"Musk's Canadian grandfather had been the head of the Canadian branch of a political movement in the 1930s called Technocracity Incorporated which, in essence, wanted to scrap democracy in the US and Canada, and have technocrats rule the countries," McGreal said.

He went on to say that the party was deemed fascistic and banned during the Second World War. Musk's grandfather decided to move to apartheid South Africa in 1950 because he 'liked the sound of apartheid.'

McGreal claimed that Errol Musk, father to the world's richest man said that the Canadian was an open Neo-Nazi. "Those four key people all have this very intimate connection to South Africa."

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How the 'PayPal mafia' and apartheid ties shaped Elon Musk's political rise into 'fascistic technocracy'