Johannesburg – South Africa’s rand breached 10 to the dollar for the first time in over four years on Thursday, sliding nearly 3 percent after President Jacob Zuma failed to allay concerns about the impact of labour unrest on the economy.

The rand hit a session trough of 10.0901 to the greenback, its weakest since March 2009, from Wednesday’s close of 9.82.

Analysts and traders said Zuma’s media address disappointed investors by failing to outline concrete steps to resolve the persistent labour strife which has hit mining output in the world’s largest platinum producer.

“Zuma failed to inspire any confidence in their approach to the mining issue, he merely highlighted what everyone knew,” a currency trader in Johannesburg said.

“This has caused everyone to rush for the door. Once we went through 9.8500, stops were triggered in a very thin market.”

The rand extended losses after Glencore Xstrata said as many as 1,500 South African workers had gone on an illegal strike at three of its chrome mines.

Zuma appealed for a fair and speedy outcome to tense wage talks in the mining sector, saying a stable and growing mining sector was required to boost growth, floundering below 3 percent after a 2009 recession.

The rand, vulnerable to sudden swings in foreign portfolio flows due to the highly liquid nature of local markets, has lost more than 11 percent against the dollar this month.

The domestic currency is on track for its worst performance in a month since September 2011 and is down nearly 19 percent since the start of 2013, the third steepest decline among world currencies.

The sharp fall will worry the South African Reserve Bank – which has held off loosening policy further since cutting interest rates by 50 basis points in July last year – as it eyes rising imported inflation pressures.

“We don’t expect any real forex intervention from the SARB unless the market functioning breaks down,” said Nomura analyst Peter Attard Montalto.

“Verbal intervention is entirely possible from SARB and government though they will have to do better than Zuma’s speech this morning which fell flat with zero new policies or reassurances to the market.” – Reuters