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Her family went through several migrations before settling down in Belgium. First, her great-grandparents left the Rif region in Morocco to live in Algeria. Fatiha Saidi was born there, most precisely in Oran on March 19, 1961. At the time, Moroccans were living peacefully in the neighboring country.
In 1966, the Moroccan-Belgian, her mother and sister immigrated to Belgium to join her father. Fatiha had an ordinary childhood, but things changed during her teenage years. When she turned 17, her parents decided to marry her off and force her to drop out of school to become a housewife and a mother.
Eleven years later, she managed to take back control over her life after she divorced. The mother of two girls went back to school and became a psychopedagogist after graduating university. Her life turned upside down again when her 13-year-old daughter died, after she suffered from a severe disability. Fatiha remarried and became the mother of a third child. Her career took a different turn when she started campaigning for many issues, including women’s rights and voting rights for immigrants.
In 1992, Fatiha Saidi became sympathetic to the causes championed by the would-be Ecolo Party and after a long battle, she eventually joined the political scene in Belgium. «I finally became a Belgian citizen and I saw that nothing was changing in the political scene, when it comes to voting rights. So, I decided to take part in politics», she told Yabiladi. Saidi then became a Brussels MP in 1999 before leaving the Ecolo Party in 2013.
Announcing the end of her political career and keeping up with her promise
A year later, she was featured on the list of the Socialist Party of Belgium (PS) and became an MP despite being at the bottom of the list. «I was 60th on a list of 75 candidates», she said.
In 2010, her party asked her to campaign for the federal elections. She was placed 9th on the list and although she did not want to abandon her position in the Brussels Parliament, she ended up winning elections.
«I was sad in the beginning because I wanted to remain a Brussels MP but I could not say no to the voters and give my place to someone else and, not being able to sit in both, I left the Parliament of Brussels to sit as a senator», she added.
In 2014, Saidi announced that she would retire and by December of 2018 she delivered on her promise. A year earlier, Fatiha Saidi decided to publish a book with Mohamed Moulay.
«By the time I stepped out of politics, I had also almost finished my second book. I decided to write an auto fiction of the story of a girl who is me but through a little fictional device. This book was released in February 2019 in Belgium and was a huge success».
Saidi is in the process of writing another book on the old ladies of the Rif, her region of origin. This project on which she has been working since 2008 is expected to be at the 2020 Book Fair in Casablanca.
In addition to her political career, the activist in her also continued with her fights. Involved in the Belgian association Actions In the Mediterranean (AIM), she became its president for a few months supporting and coaching women who want to be the leaders of tomorrow.
The Moroccan diaspora in Belgium and development in Morocco
In a good position to evaluate several decades of Moroccan immigration in her host country, Fatiha Saïdi gives us several examples, such as regularization campaigns, or «the rising number of Moroccan immigrants who start a political career in Belgium».
She referred to Rachid Madrane and Fadila Laanan, two socialist activists who have been appointed ministers, and Zakia Khattabi who currently co-directs the Ecolo Party with Ahmed Laouej. However, she cites racism and xenophobia, which would have recorded «fairly large increases», as well as discrimination in the job market.
«In terms of infrastructure and development, there are some very good things going on in Morocco but there are things that must be done. What I see lately seems worrying to me. The planning sector must be reviewed, because when you see people dying because of a river, it is absurd and disgusting».
The activist also said she had a «little fear when it comes to individual freedoms», recalling the case of young journalist Hajar Raissouni. «I hope that all this will be sorted in a good way», she says, while emphasizing her attachment to both her host country and her country of origin.
