Sensei Anton, the Timaru GP fortified by his martial art and Christian faith

Anton van den Bergh’s adventurous life has been anchored in faith and karate.

Without these, the 66-year-old father of triplets, who is grading to his third dan black belt in karate, shudders to think where he would be now.

Dr van den Bergh was born in apartheid-era South Africa to itinerant parents, who “moved every time debtors came knocking”.

In his matter-of-fact Afrikaans accent, he describes a childhood which entailed shifting every two months and attending 22 primary schools.

“As a young man, I was certainly off the rails and wasn’t always a goody-two-shoes, I can tell you that.”

Wandering a mall in Johannesburg one day in 1970, he heard shouting and, upstairs, found the source: followers of Shotokan karate master Norman Robinson drilling in his dojo.

“Norman pointed at me and invited me in, and I started training.”

At the dojo, Dr van den Bergh says, karate’s maxims, karate etiquette, self-control, respect and hard work, were instilled in him.

Academically, he struggled and feared he was “done for”, being limited to attending the then Johannesburg Art, Ballet and Music School. But war interrupted.

Conscripted into the South African Defence Force in 1973, he fought in neighbouring Angola against local militias and their Cuban and Russian adviser forces. Karate played its part in transforming him into a leader.

Leading one of the army’s karate teams, he drew on the martial art’s focus and discipline and was identified as officer material. He went on to attain the rank of captain, leading infantry units in the brutal, drawn-out bush war.

“We fought against the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, National Liberation Front of Angola and Cuban and Russian forces on an almost a daily basis for six months, with many troop losses,” recalls Dr van den Bergh, who eventually was promoted to captain and deputy battalion commander.

The conflict continued in fits and starts until 2002 and is estimated to have claimed 500,000 lives, including 2500 South African soldiers.

DISCHARGED FROM military service in 1975, aged 21, newly confident and married, he returned to high school the next year.

To qualify for entry at what was then the University of Orange Free State medical school, he achieved a distinc­tion pass across all subjects he sat.

At university, he met another love of his life – flying. After qualifying, he became the chief pilot for the university’s skydiving club.

Ongoing war cast its shadows on the discharged soldier.

At the time, South Africa was working with another apartheid-style regime, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in military operations in Mozambique.

Dr van den Bergh lost his best friend, Captain Paul Velleman, whose helicopter was shot down with 13 others, in 1979 in Mozambique. In 1976, another friend, South African Air Force pilot Kevin Winterbottom, died in a non-combat training-jet crash.

After qualifying as a GP in 1983, Dr van den Bergh worked as a locum flying doctor in Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Eventually emigrating to New Zealand in 1995 with his wife and first three children, he attained a diploma in aviation medicine from the University of Otago and a certificate in aeromedical retrieval. He has flown for the South Pacific Air Ambulance.

Throughout his flying career, he kept in touch with Africa, returning for a stint as a commercial helicopter pilot flying for wildlife sanctuary lodges as well as being their medical officer.One of his adolescent sons went “off the rails.” This brought him back to New Zealand.

“I had to choose between my flying career and my boy. I chose him.”

Dr van den Bergh returned to his faith and became a devout Christian. Before karate, church had been the only positive constant in his unsteady upbringing.

“My mother always dragged me to church, and later in life I came to understand why.”

Veering away from God in his early adulthood was like, as a pilot, leaving “true north” and “things getting a bit dark”.

“Now, I praise God for everything I have achieved, my value system is Christian and, with everything I do, I have that in mind.”

THIS YEAR, he merged his Timaru general practice, buying GP Barbara O’Connell’s rooms, into a new entity Medi Clinic, which cares for around 3500 enrolled patients.

Patients in the Dee Street practice’s waiting room can enjoy Dr van den Bergh’s art works – another fulfilling hobby.

“My art is very colourful, bright, happy and contemporary, the antithesis of my job,” he says. “I love what I do for a job, but it’s also very good to get the other side of the brain working by painting.”

In 2011, aged 55 and remarried, Dr van den Bergh became a father for the sixth time, when his wife had triplets. Ten years on, the triplets practise karate with their dad. His eldest son, 33, is also a karate practitioner.

Dr van den Bergh had taken a long break from karate, returning to teach it in 2018 and starting a dojo, JKS Shotokan Timaru.

The karate sensei now trains more than 30 regular pupils, including people with disabilities ranging from a student who uses a wheelchair, to one with Down syndrome and another who has autism.

“I want to make the same difference to people’s lives that Norman Robinson did for my life,” he says.

“You can’t put into words or money, or any other thing, the difference karate actually made.”