George Herald | Half century for Anderson’s Academy

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Half century for Anderson’s Academy
07:00 (GMT+2), Thu, 16 August 2012

Shihan Johan Anderson back in the 1960s, addressing a crowd at the opening of a new karate club.

GEORGE NEWS - It is hard to believe that it's been 50 years since the Anderson family, who are well-known in martial arts circles in the Southern Cape, opened their first karate club in Pretoria back in 1962.

Shihan Johan Anderson, an international 8th dan black belt, started his training under the legendary Shihan Stan Schmidt of the JKA karate style in the late 1950s. He was one of the first JKA karate black belts in South Africa.

The family moved over to the Funakoshi karate style in 1973. Shihan Johan was Northern-Transvaal style head from 1973 to 1989 with 13 clubs and 800 students in the greater Pretoria area.

Funakoshi karate dominated the national karate tournament scene for many years, delivering major numbers of N-Transvaal and SA NAKA champions.

In 1983 Shihan Johan and his lifelong karate associate, Kancho Eddie Cave who was the first student of the ledgendary Shihan Len Barnes the father of karate in the Western Cape in the 1950s, decided to move to a more modern and realistic approach to martial arts.

This new direction saw the establishment of the SA Contact Karate association in 1984 with Kancho Eddie and Shihan Johan at the helm. This organisation grew at a rapid rate and applied for WAKO (World Association of Kickboxing organisations) membership in 1987. Kancho Eddie was appointed SA President and Shihan Johan SA Vice-president.
WAKO SA took the first Kickboxing Springbok team to the 1987 WAKO World championships in Munich, Germany.

Shihan Johan is the only South African martial arts referee who did duty at eight Wako world championships.

He was also the Springbok coach of the first SA sports team in history to take part in Russia. This was a three way international between South Africa, Russia and England in Moscow in 1992.

Besides celebrating their 50th year in martial arts, the Anderson's Martial Arts Academy SA is also celebrating their 10th year in the SWD.

Shihan Phil Anderson, son of Shihan Johan, moved to Herold's Bay from Pretoria in 2001 and opened the first Anderson's SWD club in George in 2002. He started his martial arts career 39 years ago and after hard years of training he graded for junior black belt in 1979 and has never looked back.

Phil had aquired various black belt degrees and currently holds a 7th degree (dan) international black belt.
He received Springbok and National Protea colours on various occasions and has represented South Africa as fighter and coach all over the world.

He was undefeated SA and Northern-Transvaal kickboxing champion from 1985-1998, after which he retired from competition to concentrate on full-time martial arts instruction. He was responsible for building the SWD province to where it is today.

He has produced, with the help of the affiliated instructors, 30 world champions, top class black belts and numerous SA champions and world championship medal winners.

The SWD province now has 15 official clubs with approx 300 active members and growing by the day.
In 2005 Phil was responsible for hosting the first ever international kickboxing event in the SWD with a fantastic test, seeing SA and Canada battle it out for the honours in the George Civic Centre. In the same year the SWD hosted one of the most successful SA Kickboxing championships to date.

The forming of the National Martial Arts Academy in 1996 between Shihan Paul Cave from Cape Town and Shihan Phil, saw the birth of a new and exciting national organisation that caters for all martial arts and to date, the NMA consists of over 150 affiliated clubs nationwide.

These two men also made martial arts history in SA when their application to represent ISKA (International sport karate and kickboxing association) was approved in 2006 and they were appointed as ISKA SA President (Cave) and vice-president (Anderson).

Phil's wife, Corné has been an active administrator, manager and tournament director for the 20 years that they have been together.

Their children, Monique and Phillip, are two top class black belts who have both been in the sport for their entire lives and have won many accolades and represented their country on various occasions.