By Marvin Hokstam
PARAMARIBO--Suriname’s legendary Maroon leader Boni, who died fighting oppression exactly 225 years ago, should be celebrated as a hero and not as the naughty rascal Eurocentric historians often make him out to be. “It’s Boni’s resistance and the work of other people like him that made us free on July 1, 1863,” emphasised Iwan Wijngaarde, chairman of the Federation of Afro Surinamers FFAS, around nightfall Tuesday.
Wijngaarde was one of the speakers at a sparsely attended yet still moving ceremony at the bustling Kwaku intersection at the foot of Paramaribo, to commemorate Boni. Befittingly held at the slavery abolition remembrance statue of Kwaku, the man with the broken chains, the ritual was accompanied by three apinti drummers, one of whom opened with a traditional Maroon libation and prayer. Veteran poet Sombra and a singer performed.
Wijngaarde said the event was one of reconciliation. Son of a white planter and a black enslaved mother, Boni had escaped from slavery into the forests of Suriname, from where he raged a fearless guerrilla war against the colonials with his “Boni Negroes”; he evaded capture for years until he was betrayed by other Maroons, captured and beheaded on February 20, 1793. Legend has it that when military couriers set off in a boat toward Paramaribo, his head leapt out of the vessel into the raging waters of the Brokopondo River, irretrievable, as if it refused any part of his body being taken captive. The rapids where this happened have since been named “Boni Doro” (Boni has Arrived).
“Boni did not fight for himself, but for everybody, against slavery. He was not a racist, but someone who believed in equality and in unity. He gave his life for it and even in death he defied oppression. That’s why his commemoration should be seen in the perspective of forgiveness. Yes he was betrayed, but in the big scheme of things a lot of people betrayed each other in those days, because they fell for the schemes of the coloniser,” said Wijngaarde. “They divided us up and they made us believe that some of us are better than others, but as long as we continue believing that, we will never be able to truly advance. We are all one.”
FFAS started with annual commemoration of Boni in 2004; the organisation envisions erecting a statue for the freedom fighter. The endeavour fits within the viewpoints of the current Government that has made a point of decolonising Suriname’s history. As recently as last year the statue of Barnet Lyon, a ruthless British plantation director in Paramaribo, had to make way for one of Tetary, an Indian indentured servant who Lyon had ordered massacred together with seven others on September 26, 1884, after they had launched a protest for more humane treatment on his plantation.
“This Government wants recognition of everybody who has fought against oppression,” explained Liesbeth Peroti, representative of the Department of Culture.
