"Decades later, the Tesla Cybertruck, lately a prime target for protesters demonstrating their dislike of CEO Elon Musk, blurs the boundaries between the battlefield and the public street. When Tesla released the Cybertruck in 2023, its dramatic style polarized the public. Popular theories abounded about its unusual look. Many speculated that its inspiration had come from spaceships of science fiction. In discussing the car’s aesthetic early on, Musk referenced cyberpunk and Blade Runner, a film that features sleek metallic vehicles, though with rounded silhouettes designed for aerodynamic speed. He’s also used the phrase “The future should look like the future”—a reference, his biographer Walter Isaacson said, to a question his son Saxon asked him once: “Why doesn’t the future look like the future?”

Whether or not this was intentional, the Cybertruck’s harsh, sharp edges remind us, instead, of something from the past: the larger armored personnel vehicles that patrolled streets throughout Musk’s youth in apartheid South Africa. In the 1980s, the Casspir proliferated across the country, moving from the battlefield and onto the streets. Initially improvised as a way to circumvent international sanctions against the apartheid government, the Casspir mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle was invented and produced domestically. It was a rugged all-terrain vehicle intended to withstand gunfire and mine explosions. It could drive up to 60 mph and be modified to add artillery functions.

Eventually, the Casspir was deployed to patrol townships, the residential neighborhoods where many Black South Africans lived (...) By the 1990s, the Casspir had become an iconic global symbol of apartheid oppression."

slate.com/news-and-politics/20…

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