This is the Third post in a Series on Poverty of Blacks in Suriname and the rest of The Caribbean; This post deals with Gender and Black Leadership, and the notion that progress of Blacks is typically impeded by Colonialism, Imperalist Forces and Capitalism. The case of Suriname offers a more nuanced view, demonstrating the fallacies of both the colonial system and the political system created by Black politicians.

The absence of program to eradicate poverty can be attributed to dogmatic liberal non-interventionist viewpoints harbored by a majority of Dutch politicians dealing with Suriname. Noteworthy is that during that specific era several private citizens and syndicates received money to conduct feasibility studies on mining, forestry and mechanical rice agriculture.

In most ambitious plan however was the plan developed by Mr Kielstra Governor of Suriname between1933-1941, whose ambitious plan to revamp the ailing Surinamese economy, merely the import of more indentured from Indonesia. Many Black farmers, living on the outskirts of the city and who were already struggling to make ends meet were forcefully evicted from their lands.

Statenlid Biswamitre stelt (….) dat hij enkele dagen geleden een brief uit Domburg heeft ontvangen waarin o.m. wordt meegedeeld dat een Creoolse landbouwer die ongeveer 55 jaren op zijn grondje gevestigd was, daarvan is verwijderd en men daar sterk onder de indruk verkeert dat men deze percelen het liefst aan Javanen afstaat (vel 36, p122).

Many Blacks were evicted from their land, losing their livelihood, and forced to move city, to live in squalor, in so called prasi-oso’s (court-yard single room houses or Surinamese-style slums, scattered all over the city) and in huts. There is little quantitative data available on the extent of poverty, but the ratio between prasi-osos (plus huts) versus normal houses, two to one, demonstrated the pervasiveness of poverty. The Surinamese government refused to go along with a housing plan, because this plan would only bring work for Dutch construction workers (NOTE).

The Colonial Assembly had on numerous occasions expressed its concern over the fact that people could not afford to pay the steep roof-tax; over plans to import more workers; over wide spread poverty, joblessness, disease and decay of society. Petitions to revamp the economy, to create jobs, to tackle decay were discussed on a regular basis by the Colonial Assembly, throughout its existence, from 1866 until 1939, when it became the Staten van Suriname. Striking example is the concern over the import of more indentured, because an increase the number of farmers would gravely hurt the already ailing agriculture sector: In the wording of Mr. Simons, member of the Colonial Assembly

(….) in de tweede plaats is te wijzen op de overproductie van de kleine landbouw waarvan de afzet naar de buitenlandsche markten tegen prijzen welke de concurrentie aldaar kunnen doorstaan tot nog toe niet bevredigend is (….) terwijl door overproductie de binnelandsche productie naar beneden wordt gedrukt. [Dat het kleinbedrijf] over het algemeen niet lonend is uit te oefenen [hetgeen] verklaart en rechtvaardigt ,,de trek naar de stad”.

The callousness of the Colonial Authorities their lack of respect for human rights, humanity and pressing problems that needed a resolution; the manner in which they stirred injustice and discrimination, deviated from Dutch norm of good governance. The members of Colonial Assembly, in their effort to be worthy opponent found them self demonized and badmouthed, portrayed as racists and fascists by the colonial Authorities and the Dutch overseas government (NOTE). The colonial authorities persisted to driving a wedge between Blacks of different skin tone, using the difference in skin-tone, class and culture to kindle latent animosities and to undermine local authority. The effectiveness of divide and conquer only became apparent during decolonization, when Black politicians in the 1950s rekindled said animosities to seek support among lower class Blacks, using the same rhetoric as the Colonial Authority.

The statistics demonstrate that the percentage of Black poor in Suriname throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s remained high, even after Black politicians came into power during decolonization. One of the biggest culprits was the adoption of modernization program that placed emphasis on industrial take-off instead of on empowerment and human development (Rostow).

Research of archival data demonstrated that that the majority of the plans proposed during the 1950s and 1960s by the Surinamese government stemmed from earlier Dutch plans on mining in the interior and agriculture of rice. Plans to build affordable housing or to make education more accessible to the poor were insufficient to make a difference. Comparing existing literature with archives provided pivotal answers why the economic development in Suriname stagnated. One of the key factors for failure was that many of these plans were confounded on personal ideas and normative conceptions on economic development, ideas that ignored the socio-historical complexities of Suriname. For example, many plans could simply not be implemented because of lack of skilled labor and technical expertise. Indeed a large percentage of the people lacked skills and education to optimally function in for example a factory, or work as a farmer, and government did nothing to remedy this discrepancies. Because policy-making to tackle poverty remained insubstantial, a specific category of people could not get out of poverty.

Research of available publications by the Planning Agency Suriname (PBS) reveals that the Welfare Plan (1950-1960) had been developed to tackle poverty, instead funding was used for thedevelopment of infrastructure. The only project proposed to tackle human development was a census that merely registered human potential. The Planning Agency in 1965 estimated unemployment at 10%, a figure that excluded the Indigenous and the Marroons. The assumption is that unemployment was at best, two or three times higher, more in the neighborhood of 20-30%. This assumption is also based by taking the informal economic sector into account, a sector typically dominated by women working as servants, cleaners, washerwoman, cooks and street vendors.

Harking back to matrifocality, to argue that poverty that is gender-related, specifically affecting lone mothers with children. It seems that over time, many Black lower class females remained stuck in the informal economic sector, working as cleaners and street vendors. The socialization of lone-mothers, rather the fact that in some sub-cultures, having children out-of-wedlock at a very young age was accepted, made tackling poverty even more challenging. The afore-mentioned claim is also based on recent figures on the prevalence of out-of wedlock pregnancies in Black communities in Diaspora in The Netherlands. These figures do not deviate from the figures presented by Van Lier in 1950. Similar proclivities are also found in Great Britain among Afro-Caribbean women and African-American women in the USA (NOTE).

Conclusion
The disproportionate number of lone-mother families, the emergence of a culture of poverty that affected large segments of the population, inadvertently explains why social cohesion remained weak. Competition consistently remained at the level of survival; too many people of the lower classes were more concerned with food and shelter than with organization, participation and socialization. Using matrifocality as a premise to explain certain phenomena in Surinamese society such as quality of Black leadership is however flawed, specifically when taking into account that women’s movements gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s. In Suriname the Nationale Vrouwen Beweging (NVB) dates back to the early1980s, and it has yet to gain sufficient support from women to actually influence the political agenda. Laws protecting the rights of unmarried women and their off-spring, or guarantee payment of child support are in their infancy stages. Studies showed that lone-mothers receiving child-support, to supplement their income have a better opportunity to get out of poverty.

The lack of political influence and power of women is indeed a signal of disempowerment, a signal that in fact belies the fact that women are the driving force behind the Surinamese economy.

Based on the findings of this paper, the connection between matrifocality and limited social solidarity is not very apparent. Social solidarity or a lack thereafter has more correlates with democratization and mobilization and the development of the party-system during decolonization. Matrifocality as a key-feature of enslavement did indeed become a key-feature of poverty among the Black lower classes. Matrifocality is not a static phenomenon, the fact that it persists to be a feature of Black community societies begs for more research. For example why is out-of –wedlock pregnancy typically at a very young age acceptable in Black community-societies? Why are Black female-male relationships too weak to sustain long term commitment; 2) why are Black fathers typically absent, leaving women to bear the brunt of the upbringing of children?

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

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