Tech billionaire Elon Musk has long claimed that Starlink — the satellite internet provider owned by his aerospace company, SpaceX — is not allowed to operate in his birth country of South Africa because, in his own words, he’s “not Black.” Specifically, he’s claimed that the country’s corporate ownership laws effectively prevent him from launching the service there.

For example, Musk shared the claim in X posts in March 2025 and January 2026, and referenced it during a remote interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in May 2025.

“There are now 140 laws in South Africa that give a strong preference to you if you’re a Black South African and not otherwise,” he said during the interview. “Now I’m in this sort of situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a license to operate in Starlink because I’m not Black.”

Others, including former West Virginia state Rep. Derrick Evans, also amplified the claim online in April 2026.

(X user @cb_doge)

However, South Africa’s government has repeatedly said that Starlink isn’t banned from the country. 

In April 2023, South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies rebutted claims of a government block on Starlink, stating that the company had not submitted the applications required to offer its services. The country’s foreign ministry also said in March 2025 that Starlink was “welcome to operate in South Africa provided there’s compliance with local laws,” the BBC and Reuters reported.

Snopes reached out to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, which regulates telecommunications and broadcasting in the country, to ask whether Starlink had submitted an application to operate in the country or if the South African government had reached an agreement with Musk that would allow Starlink to operate in the nation.

In April 2025, a representative told Snopes via email that Starlink “has not applied for a license with ICASA.” In other words, Musk’s company had not completed the paperwork required to operate in the nation. We asked whether this was still true as of April 2026, but had not heard back at the time of publication. 

Meanwhile, Starlink’s website claims the company is “unable to apply for the licenses required to operate due to current ownership regulations” but adds that this “may soon change.”

The matter is rooted in the legal nuances of South Africa’s post-apartheid era. After the state-sanctioned system of racial segregation ended in 1994, then-President Nelson Mandela’s government passed legislation aiming to bolster the economic power of the country’s Black majority. One such law requires many companies operating in South Africa, including telecommunications companies, to give local Black firms at least a 30% stake in operations within the nation.

According to February 2025 reporting from Semafor, the South African government was considering an exception to that rule for Musk’s ventures, including Starlink. On May 20, 2025, Bloomberg reported that the nation’s government struck such a deal, partly to reduce tensions between the country and Musk’s close ally at the time, U.S. President Donald Trump.

Solly Malatsi, the South African minister of telecommunications and digital technologies, published a directive on Dec. 12, 2025, that would allow companies to meet the requirement through “equity equivalent investment programs” instead. That investment must total either 30% of the valuation of the applicant’s South African operations or 4% of their total revenue from South African operations over a specified period.

Starlink’s website said it planned to meet the requirement by investing 500 million South African rand (about $30 million) to “connect 5,000 rural schools with free, high-speed internet, benefiting more than 2.4 million learners each year.” We reached out to SpaceX to ask whether it had launched an effort to do so and whether it planned to submit the required paperwork to the South African government, but had not heard back by the time of publication.

Both Musk and Trump have publicly floated the conspiracy theory that there is a “white genocide” taking place within South Africa, a claim that Snopes debunked in 2018. The Trump administration withheld aid from the country in February 2025 because, it said, white South Africans faced discrimination.

For further reading, we debunked a claim that Musk said people could not use Teslas to dodge a U.S. military draft.

Sources:

Apartheid | South Africa, Definition, Facts, Beginning, & End | Britannica. 17 May 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/apartheid.

Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment – The Department of Trade Industry and Competition. https://www.thedtic.gov.za/financial-and-non-financial-support/b-bbee/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment/. Accessed 22 May 2025.

Elon Musk’s Starlink and the Racially Charged Row over Operating in South Africa. 16 Apr. 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly3d8gd8mno.

Gedeon, Joseph. “US Suspends Aid to South Africa after Trump Order.” The Guardian, 6 Mar. 2025. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/aid-trump-south-africa.

Palma, Bethania. “Is a ‘Large-Scale Killing’ of White Farmers Underway in South Africa?” Snopes, 24 Aug. 2018, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/white-farmers-south-africa/.

Prinsloo, Loni, and S’thembile Cele. “South Africa to Offer Musk Starlink Deal Before Trump Meet.” Bloomberg, 20 May 2025, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-20/south-africa-to-offer-musk-starlink-deal-before-trump-meeting.

South Africa Might Bypass Black Ownership Rules for Musk. 10 Feb. 2025, https://www.semafor.com/article/02/10/2025/south-africa-might-bend-black-ownership-rules-for-elon-musk.

“South Africa to Offer Musk Starlink Deal before Trump Meeting, Bloomberg News Reports.” Reuters, 20 May 2025. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africa-offer-musk-starlink-deal-before-trump-meeting-bloomberg-news-2025-05-20/.