Under a raft of measures meant to help pluck the country out of crisis, central bank governor Gideon Gono and acting finance minister Patrick Chinamasa last week legalised the use of the Botswana pula, South African rand, British pound and the American dollar alongside the local dollar – formalising a practice that had become common across the country.
But Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said the move to adopt foreign currencies would see Zimbabwe's hyperinflation troubles spreading to neighbouring countries the same way a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 3 000 Zimbabweans has spilled over to South Africa and Botswana.
What the Zimbabwean authorities are doing is going to spread Zimbabwean inflation to other regional countries and these effects will be felt in all neighbouring countries, Vavi said, responding to questions about what possible impact Harare's adoption of the rand and the pula could have on those currencies.
The effects of this randification will not be different from what we have seen from the cholera virus, which is still spreading into other regional countries. Gono will soon bring down the regional economies together with that of Zimbabwe, said Vavi
COSATU has been among the region's most outspoken critics of President Robert Mugabe's controversial policies that are blamed for plunging once prosperous Zimbabwe into an unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis marked by a collapsed currency and the world's highest inflation last officially estimated at 231 million percent last July.
Independent analysts say the figure could now be anything in the trillions.
In addition, Zimbabwe's crisis is also seen in acute shortages of food and every essential commodity, deepening poverty and a mass exodus of economic refuges to neighbouring countries in search for jobs and better living conditions.
A unity government expected to be formed next week by Mugabe, opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara has raised hopes that Zimbabwe could finally be able to emerge from its crisis.