Neil Gevisser, 60, was leaving a west London tube station when he heard glass breaking and a scream from an adjoining road. He spotted a tall man running towards him dressed in motorbike gear who was about to get on a scooter when he heard the mother scream again. He immediately sprang into action, karate-kicking the man's scooter with both feet as he tried to ride off, causing it to spin onto the road.
Gevisser said: "I heard the smashing of glass and a scream. I wasn't sure what had happened but I found out later that this man had broken the window of a car with a stone or hammer or something, snatched the handbag and ran away.
"I then heard a woman shout 'I've been robbed' and saw this guy running against the traffic in the middle of the road. He'd left his scooter running and it was revving and he ran up to it, put the bag in a box on the back and was going so I double-kicked the back of it.
"The man then got up and started coming towards me and I knew he was coming to get me so I hit him first with a 'roundhouse' to the stomach and then the shins. It's a karate movement - it looks like one action but it's actually two but it's quick.
"I hit him really, really hard. He got up and hobbled a bit and ran off down the road. He must have been badly injured but his adrenalin probably forced him to run and escape."
The police arrived within three minutes but the mugger had fled and detectives are still looking for him. The woman also arrived at the scene and collected her bag from the scooter, which turned out to be stolen. She thanked Gevisser.
Gevisser was originally from Durban. He was forced out of South Africa in the early 1970s aged 24 after writing anti-apartheid poems in a book entitled Picking up the Pieces of Yourself.
It was published in 1972 but the authorities only noticed its political content two years later, after it became popular on South African campuses.
The security police visited his mother Zena Gevisser, and privately warned her that her son, a former Michaelhouse pupil, was about to be arrested and should leave the country. He left within hours.
Zena Gevisser once ran South Africa's largest model agency.
Neil's cousin is author and journalist Mark Gevisser, biographer of Thabo Mbeki. In the past Neil has worked as a massage therapist, working with patients such as tennis players John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Ivan Lendl.
But despite his actions, he does not see his intervention as heroic. He said: "I suppose coming from South Africa I'm used to getting stuck in. South Africans are very loyal people even if their politics or views are not always right.
"I don't think you should walk on by, I believe you should intervene if something wrong is happening. I've done karate since my teens and yes, I could have been hurt if the guy was carrying a gun but I just did what was right."
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