Mugabe accuse Zimbabweans of failing to protect Cecil the lion

President Robert Mugabe has accused his own people of 'failing to protect' Cecil the lion.

In his first public comments about the lion, Mugabe said on Monday that Zimbabweans should protect their natural resources from foreign "vandals" who try to illegally acquire those resources.

Mugabe made the announcement during a speech at Zimbabwe's Heroes Day celebrations today.

Mugabe went on to imply that Cecil the lion's highly-publicised death was a 'vestige of colonial exploitation'.

"The sovereign right, supreme in its essence over all that is under Zimbabwe, all that is above the land, growing, the forests, all the creatures, those creeping, those running on fours even Cecil the Lion is yours... he's dead but he was yours to protect but you failed to protect him. There are vandals who come from all the world..some are ordinary visitors but some would like to vandalise, to irregularly acquire and vandalise those resources," said Mugabe.

Mugabe said that animals are also something to safeguard. "All the birds, snakes, lizards, baboons, monkeys are all ours, snakes bite but they are ours. We must safeguard them."

Mugabe's rant comes after Zimbabwe lifted a hastily-imposed countrywide ban on lion, leopard and elephant hunting in the wake of Cecil the lion's death,  though it remains in force in a limited area.

The ban was imposed on August 2 in the wake of global outrage over the killing of Cecil by a US dentist on an illegal hunt just outside Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe.

Lion-hunting is still banned in the Antoinette farm that Cecil was killed in in early July, another farm where a second lion was recently illegally hunted, and in two other areas.

Significantly, the Zimbabwe authorities also appear to have banned all hunting of "collared iconic animals."