The video is better. It points out that there's a continuum. I couldn't help but think of tenant farmers or sharecroppers. Tenant farmers could be free, or bonded to the land. There was a continuum from wealthy tenants (who hired workers) to serfs to slaves. It seems that a lot of Mauritania sits all over that continuum.
Most of the problem could simply be that they don't have anywhere else to go. But it's a little spooky that their government seems to be in cahoots with the slave owning classes.
On the other hand - look what happened to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when the land owners were disenfranchised, and their farms given to cronies of the new government - the whole place fell into a famine because the new "masters" couldn't farm.
There's no surefire way (to my knowledge) to reconstruct a country which has just come out of slavery. My gut reaction would be incrementalism - find ways of punishing the worst offenders so the bad (but not terrible) land/slave owners don't feel threatened. Then slowly start moving up the chain - punish physical abuse, then ensure freedom of movement, then look at land redistribution and better political representation. At no stage should a large portion of the population (i.e. every land / slave owner) feel threatened, just a small fraction of them.
You'd make a false distinction between "landlords" and "slavers". First you go for the people who murder their slaves, and the "landlords" won't resist because they don't murder their slaves. Then you go for the ones who beat their slaves, then the ones who restrict movement, then the ones who don't pay wages ...
Most of the problem could simply be that they don't have anywhere else to go. But it's a little spooky that their government seems to be in cahoots with the slave owning classes.
On the other hand - look what happened to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when the land owners were disenfranchised, and their farms given to cronies of the new government - the whole place fell into a famine because the new "masters" couldn't farm.
There's no surefire way (to my knowledge) to reconstruct a country which has just come out of slavery. My gut reaction would be incrementalism - find ways of punishing the worst offenders so the bad (but not terrible) land/slave owners don't feel threatened. Then slowly start moving up the chain - punish physical abuse, then ensure freedom of movement, then look at land redistribution and better political representation. At no stage should a large portion of the population (i.e. every land / slave owner) feel threatened, just a small fraction of them.
You'd make a false distinction between "landlords" and "slavers". First you go for the people who murder their slaves, and the "landlords" won't resist because they don't murder their slaves. Then you go for the ones who beat their slaves, then the ones who restrict movement, then the ones who don't pay wages ...