A Blow to the Head: A History of Violence

One summer morning, Cape Town academic Andries Du Toit remonstrates mildly with a white man who 
is being rude to a black waitress in the cafeteria of his local health club. A few weeks later he finds 
himself sprawled on his back with a fractured cheekbone, blood pooling in the back of his throat, the 
target of payback from one of the city’s most feared gangsters. What just happened? 
Following the threads that radiate out from his personal experience of violence, Du Toit traces the events 
and the decisions that brought him to that fateful confrontation. What ensues is a journey of discovery 
that forces him to confront his place and complicity in a country still traumatised by racial violence – 
and to ask/explore what is required by the work of healing and repair.