Cuban President Honours Wole Soyinka With National Medal

Nigerian writer and Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has been awarded a medal of national honour by Cuba President, Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Prof. Soyinka received the Haydee Santamaria Medal at an event held in Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba on 23rd August.

The national honour medal was instituted in memory of Haydée Santamaría Cuadrado, who was as a Cuban revolutionary and politician, regarded as a heroine in post-revolutionary Cuba.

A statement issued by the Cuban President, quoted Jorge Fornet, director of the Center for Literary Research of Casa de las Americas, saying that awarding Soyinka the medal that bears the name of that extraordinary woman is an act of justice that honours the country.

READ ALSO: Harvest of Tributes As Soyinka Celebrates 90th Birthday

After the ceremony, Diaz-Canel held a meeting with Soyinka, where he thanked him for the visit.

“It is the visit of a brother who has always been fighting for the most just causes,” the president noted.

The statement said the Haydee Santamaria Medal is conferred to national and foreign citizens and groups who, over the years, have shared the main objectives of the Casa which include “the enrichment, defence and integration of the genuine cultures of our region and the entire South.”

This event also celebrated Wole Soyinka’s 90th birthday and the 60th anniversary of his first visit to Cuba, where he has returned on several occasions.

The Nobel Laureate in Literature, who stated that “Cuba is also my home”, also highlighted the strong ties that unite the island and Africa.

Cuba’s Union of Writers and Artists’s Awards Soyinka International Prize

Also, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC ) awarded Soyinka the organisation’s Dulce María Loynaz International Prize. It coincided with the 63rd anniversary of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.

While receiving the prize from the president of UNEAC, Marta Bonet, Wole Soyinka expressed his happiness and appreciation of the award from the creative group.

The 1986 Nobel Laureate in Literature confessed to having had great political and cultural adventures in Cuba, recognising the indispensable role played by the Antillean nation in the liberation of the African continent, something that, according to him, “we must not allow ourselves to forget, because Cuba has shown that both the pen and the weapons of liberation count in achieving the sovereignty and self-determination of our peoples.”

Shortly before the award ceremony, theatre critic and theorist Omar Valiño, described Soyinka in his eulogy as a “consistent man”, highlighting the sincerity and intelligence of his work, which draws on the ancestral wisdom of Yoruba culture.

The director of the José Martí National Library of Cuba, in a cultural ceremony in front of writers and artists, recalled the words of the Nigerian poet when he said that “as is well known, Cuba is part of the African continent by will, not by chance,” so his vision, he said, adjusts a geography beyond the physical space, synthesising the centuries-old relationship between Mother Africa and the Caribbean island.

“His phrase, like no other, sums up the bond of solidarity and detachment that Fidel and the Revolution have maintained for the benefit of the black continent, through a military, medical and educational epic that has gone down in history.”