"You have to be tolerant about tolerance," says South African poet Antjie Krog. "There have to be clear regulations about how people deal with one another," says lawyer Gerard Spong. A court case against Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV, starts next week. Mr Wilders has been accused of discrimination and inciting hate. It's a case that also explores the boundaries of tolerance.

Krog is a guest at Winternachten, an annual literary festival held in The Hague. In her opening address, she called for tolerance and interconnectedness, the notion that everything and everyone on the planet is reciprocally connected.
 

Overwhelmed
In 1989, she made her first visit to the Netherlands from what was then a racist, apartheid South Africa and she still remembers it well, "I was overwhelmed by the tolerance. On the front page of a newspaper I read an article about the rights of lesbians and gays in an old people's home. And I thought, what an amazingly free country this is. Real freedom. At home, one didn't even dare say homosexual out loud. But, with the passing of years, the Netherlands sounds more and more like apartheid South Africa".
 

Radical
She continues, "Apartheid radicalised black South Africans. Black people felt forced to turn against whites and to fight them. I'm very worried now because Muslims are becoming more radical. The way that the western world deals with Islam, forces people to take sides. It doesn't help them solve their own problems. Many people feel forced to wear a headscarf, otherwise they won't be real Muslims. Outward expressions of religious belief should never be suppressed".
 

Wilders trial
The trial of PVV leader Geert Wilders begins next week. He has called Islam a backward religion and frequently agitates against headscarves and the number of mosques in the Netherlands. The far right politician has been accused of inciting hatred and discriminating against Muslims. His political party enjoys a great deal of support among the Dutch electorate.
 

Mr Wilders was brought to trial after a number of people filed complaints against him. One of them is the well-known Dutch criminal defence lawyer Gerard Spong. Although Mr Spong has refused to comment on the trial, he did deliver a lecture on regulation at Winternachten.
 

"I'm calling for clearer regulation in the law," says Mr Spong. "The article in the constitution on freedom of expression has led to a maze of legal rulings. A vast number of ethnic and religious communities want to live here in peaceful co-operation. In order to make this extremely complicated society governable, we need explicit, clear-cut regulations about what is and what is not permissible. We have to treat each other decently. It doesn't matter whether that stems from good manners, the law of the land or religious belief, but we have to treat each other decently."
 

Convince people
Antjie Krog is disturbed by the trial of Mr Wilders, "I want to live in country where people care about each other. If you have to use the law to force people to allow others the space to be themselves... well, I'd find that absolutely awful ".
 

The poet has first-hand experience of how apartheid divided South Africa. She says that South Africa's apartheid regime was similar to intolerance because it shut some people out, "intolerance leads to destruction. My country is not a paradise of tolerance, but we know very well that intolerance will destroy you in the end".
 

Krog consistently calls for tolerance, "you want newcomers to the country accept the liberal, tolerant values. If someone comes here who doesn't share those values, then you have to find a tolerant manner to convince people to accept them. In order to survive here, it's important that they accept liberalism and toleration."
 

In the square in front of the lower house of parliament she sees an article from the constitution, carved into a long stone bench. It's the article that says that everybody in the Netherlands is equal. "That is fantastic," says Krog, "there isn't a better foundation than that".