The Johannesburg stock exchange (JSE) closed weaker on Tuesday as it took the brunt of the news that the South African economy had slipped into a technical recession.

South Africa has officially entered a technical recession after Statistic South Africa announced that the country's real gross domestic product (GDP) had decreased by 0.7 percent in the second quarter of the year.

The first quarter's GDP growth has now also been revised to -2.6 percent. This is SA's first recession since the 2008/2009 global financial crisis.

The biggest drags on economic growth were agriculture, forestry and fisheries, which decreased by 29.29 percent.

"We believe that South Africa's agricultural economy could rebound to the positive territory in the third quarter of 2018," Wandile Sihlobo, an economist at Agbiz, told Xinhua on Tuesday.

South Africa's rand had shed 2.3 percent against the U.S. dollar by Tuesday afternoon.

Bond yields spiked and retail, banking and property shares were heavily sold off on the JSE.

On the JSE, Naspers's negative patch continues, dropping 0.67 percent to R3,183.61, though Chinese internet company Tencent, of which Naspers owns about a third, was up nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong trade.

The all share was 1.4 percent down at 57,891.82 points. Industrials lost 1.76 percent, banks 4.17 percent, general retailers 4.27 percent, and food and drug retailers 2.25 percent, but the gold index added 0.62 percent.

British American Tobacco rose 2.37 percent to R732.49.

TFG lost 6.6 percent to R167.23 despite earlier reporting a solid 32-percent growth in turnover for the first 20 weeks of its financial year to end-March. Enditem