Siege of Kimberley - Aftermath

Aftermath

On 17 February, Kekewich was promoted to the rank of full colonel while French was promoted to major general. A number of medals were issued to combatants, notably the Kimberley Star, which was awarded by mayor H.A. Oliver. Since the medal was not an official one, it could not be worn with military uniforms—the official award for the siege of Kimberley was a bar to the Queen's South Africa Medal.

The British established a concentration camp at Kimberley to hold interned Boer women and children—a memorial outside the Newton Dutch Reformed Church commemorates those that died in the camp.

The Honoured Dead Memorial, a sandstone edifice commissioned by Cecil Rhodes and designed by Sir Herbert Baker, was erected to commemorate the defenders who fell during the Siege. Twenty-seven soldiers are entombed in the memorial, which was made from stone quarried in the Matopo Hills in Zimbabwe. It bears an inscription by Rudyard Kipling. Long Cecil, the gun manufactured in the De Beers workshops during the Siege, is mounted on the stylobate (facing the Free State), surrounded by shells from the Boer Long Tom.

The Sanatorium Hotel, in which Cecil Rhodes stayed during the siege, is the present-day site of the McGregor Museum. The stone that he used to mount his horse is still in the gardens, while the story of the siege is covered extensively in the permanent exhibitions of the museum.