The rand traded at 14.3150 against the dollar at 1535 GMT, 1.07% firmer than its previous close.

"The rand continues to draw benefit from the weaker dollar even as numerous risks remain on the horizon," said Bianca Botes, director at Citadel Global.

The dollar was on the back foot against the safe-haven yen and Swiss franc on Tuesday, dragged by soft U.S. manufacturing data and rising concerns about the Delta variant. [USD/]

"The rand is expected to consolidate in a 14.35/14.55 range ahead of the US payrolls data on Friday,' said Andre Cilliers, Currency Strategist at TreasuryONE.

US non-farm payrolls is an important parameter to determine the Fed's future policy stance.

The two major market indexes on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) slipped following a global sell-off in gaming companies led by China.

While shares in local banks and commodity companies showed resilience, the overall impact was offset by index heavyweights Naspers and Prosus which crashed as investors dumped Tencent stock.

The benchmark all-share index closed 0.17% down to 68,706 points and the blue-chip index of top 40 companies ended down 0.26% to 62,543 points.

Naspers and Prosus both fell by around 7%.

A state-owned media outlet in China on Tuesday branded online video games as "spiritual opium", triggering fears that the Chinese regulators will train their guns on gaming after a string of regulatory overhauls in past weeks have battered Chinese tech companies.

Tencent is one of China's biggest video game companies and a little less than a third of it is owned by Prosus, a subsidiary of Naspers.

"It's coming in dribs and drabs," said Thato Mashigo, portfolio manager at Sanlam Private Wealth, on the regulatory tightening of tech firms in China, adding that this is leading to a lot of uncertainty in the market.

"Ideally, you would want all the regulation to come at once. Investors could digest and re-price various sectors or companies accordingly."

In fixed income, the yield on the benchmark 2030 government bond was down two basis points to 8.815%.

(Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo and Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Ramakrishnan M. and Angus MacSwan)