Elon Musk has announced his decision to identify as Black to navigate the labyrinthine complexities of South Africa's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies. Musk, who is usually busy launching rockets into space and tweeting about his latest meme stock, has taken a keen interest in the BEE program after encountering what can only be described as a bureaucratic black hole in his efforts to expand Starlink services into South Africa.

Musk, renowned for his penchant for pushing boundaries, has taken a page out of South Africa’s BEE playbook, where certain racial and economic criteria must be met to secure government contracts and business approvals. By identifying as Black, Musk aims to avoid the typical red tape that has stymied countless businesses trying to penetrate the South African market.

“Why should my spaceship launch be held hostage by a policy that seems to value race over innovation?” Musk remarked on X in a post that immediately went viral. “I’ve always admired the simplicity of BEE—after all, it's the one system where you can go from being an interplanetary explorer to a victim of bureaucracy just by switching your racial identity.”

The BEE policy, which claims to rectify the injustices of the past, has recently come under scrutiny for being less about empowerment and more about creating a new class of bureaucratic overlords. Critics argue that the policy has morphed into a “black hole” that swallows up good intentions and replaces them with endless paperwork, racism and red tape.

Musk’s decision to identify as Black has been met with a unanimous applause by the liberal elite in South Africa, with remarks about how 'brave' he was in coming out of the racial closet.

In a statement, Musk explained, “I realized that to navigate South Africa’s BEE black holes, I needed to rid myself of my white identity, as whiteness is a sign of racism. More should be done to combat racism, and the best way to achieve non-racialism is to exclude racial minorities, especially white people, from business.”

Not to be outdone, other tech moguls have begun to explore their own racial identities in an effort to bypass similar bureaucratic hurdles. Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly looking into identifying as Indigenous to improve Facebook's outreach efforts in remote communities, while Jeff Bezos is considering a brief stint as a Native Hawaiian to navigate regulatory requirements in the Pacific.

South African officials have not yet commented on Musk’s audacious move, but there are whispers that they are considering implementing a new policy: “Be-Every-Race” (BER), which would allow business leaders to switch races on a monthly basis, thus ensuring they can keep up with the ever-changing requirements of BEE.

As Musk continues his quest to bring the stars closer to Earth, one can only hope that his foray into racial identity politics will spark a conversation that leads to a more transparent and less convoluted approach to economic empowerment in South Africa.