Where to find reliable forex news for SA traders:
When forex trading, staying informed with accurate and timely news is essential for making informed decisions. For South African traders, accessing reliable forex news sources can majorly improve your strategies and outcomes.
Below is a curated list of reputable platforms that provide comprehensive forex news, analysis and tools for the needs of South African traders.?
1. FXStreet
FXStreet is a leading source for real-time analysis and forex news. The platform offers live exchange rates, charts and an economic calendar, making it a valuable resource for traders seeking up-to-date market information. Its user-friendly interface and in-depth analysis cater to both novice and experienced traders. ?
2. Forex Factory
Forex Factory aggregates forex news from various reputable sources, providing traders with a consolidated view of market developments. Its active forums foster a community where traders can discuss strategies and share insights, adding to collective knowledge.
The platform’s calendar feature highlights significant economic events, helping traders anticipate market movements.?
3. DailyFX
DailyFX offers comprehensive forex news, analysis and educational content. Its real-time news feed and expert commentary assist traders in understanding market dynamics. DailyFX also provides trading signals and forecasts, aiding traders in making informed decisions.?
4. Investing.com
Investing.com is a global financial portal that provides a wide array of financial tools, including real-time quotes, charts and an economic calendar. Its forex news section covers global currency markets extensively, offering insights into macroeconomic factors affecting exchange rates.?
5. BusinessTech
As South Africa’s largest business news website, BusinessTech covers finance, technology and industry news. While not exclusively focused on forex, its coverage of economic developments within South Africa can provide valuable context for currency movements and trading decisions. ?
6. Prestige Bulletin
Prestige Bulletin is a South African financial journal that has been published monthly since 1989. It covers investments, financial markets, personal finance, tax planning and entrepreneurship. While not exclusively focused on forex, its objective analysis of financial markets can offer valuable insights for traders. ?
7. Finance Magnates
Finance Magnates is a global provider of multi-asset trading news, research and events. It offers in-depth articles on forex brokers, trading platforms and market analysis. South African traders can benefit from its comprehensive coverage of the forex industry and broker reviews.?
8. ForexSEO
ForexSEO provides a curated list of top forex trading news sites, offering insights into various platforms that deliver reliable market news and analysis. This resource can help traders identify additional news sources to diversify their information intake.
9. Vantage
Vantage offers a copy trading platform that allows traders to follow and replicate the strategies of top traders. While primarily a trading platform, Vantage also provides market analysis and news updates, which can be beneficial for traders seeking integrated news and trading solutions. ?
10. Investopedia
Investopedia is renowned for its educational content on financial markets. Its articles on forex trading, including strategies like trading on news releases, offer foundational knowledge that can be particularly useful for beginner traders. ?
By using these reliable forex news sources, South African traders can heighten their market awareness to develop informed trading strategies.
Trauma is hampering the education of South Africa’s children:
Zanemfundo Primary School in Philippi, on the Cape Flats, recently saw a group of armed men storming the school and demanding protection money. Teachers and children were traumatised by the event and many refused to come back to school.
Incidents like these are not uncommon at many South African schools. In gangster-ridden areas, violence on school property is a regular occurrence.
“Before we built the wall, we had gang shootings here at the school twice or maybe three times a week,” says the principal of Levana Primary School, Shamiegh Charity.
She had to secure private funding of R7.9 million to erect an extra-high wall around the school in Lavender Hill, outside Cape Town, to protect learners and teachers. Since the wall was built, there have been no more incidents of violence on school property. But last year, a learner was shot dead on a street corner right outside the school.
In many low-income areas, children might be safe at school but they are at risk of all kinds of violence, neglect and abuse in their homes. Trauma is a reality for most South African children. It is estimated that, by the age of 17, six in every 10 children will have experienced a traumatic event.
In addition, statistics show that an estimated 13 million children live in poverty. Of the matric class of 2024, 79% were recipients of social grants, with 35 200 receiving the foster child grant.
The effect of trauma on the learning brain is significant. “When someone experiences trauma, their brain goes into fight, flight or freeze mode. If this trauma is ongoing in childhood, the cortical part of the brain is not able to develop properly. This impacts on behaviour, as well as learning,” says Judy Strickland, founder of the Hope House Counselling Centre.
“The limbic and survival brain are engaged and on red alert but the thinking parts of the brain, the cortex and prefrontal cortex, are disengaged to the detriment of normal.”
Strickland describes a desperate situation for many schools. “Instead of being safe places of nurturing, learning and human development, many SA schools instead hold up a distressing mirror to their surrounding communities. These are beset with poverty, crime, gangsterism, substance abuse and other mental health issues — all of which traumatise people”.
It can come as little surprise that, according to the 2024 matric results, almost 50% of learners who started in grade one had dropped out of school along the way.
Strickland and others have called for awareness around designating schools as “trauma-informed”. Once a school is trauma-informed, it can look at special training for teachers, a more holistic experience for learners — and improved academic outcomes as well.
As a trauma-informed school, Christel House in Ottery, Cape Town, trains teachers in neuroscience, the scientific study of brain chemistry. This training emphasises how strategic activation of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin can significantly reduce the debilitating effects of trauma on children.
As examples of how the training works, it has young women like Aluta M, who was the school’s top matric in 2024. She was once living on the streets of Gugulethu with two unemployed parents and a constant fear for her safety and where her next meal would come from.
“Brains can adapt and they can change for the better,” says educational expert Eric Jensen.
He has done years of research into the subject. It comes down to teachers becoming the responsible, caring and motivational adults that these children, regrettably, often do not have at home.
I have seen first-hand that, to improve academic results, you need to open more than a child’s mind — you need to open their hearts. This means providing an extended, more inclusive educational package of which academics is only one part.
Providing a supportive environment means ensuring a child is fed, clothed, has safe transport to school, counselling if needed, and a social worker to address urgent issues at home. Most importantly, they need adults they can trust and such relationships take time and effort to build.
To break the cycle of poverty, the school has to be seen as, and function as, a caring community. It is all worthwhile when children go on to qualify as doctors and lawyers and credit their school with making it possible.
The school becomes more than an academic facility, it becomes a haven and a refuge for children who need to feel safe before they can learn. The model works and we need more schools to understand that, if they want their academic results to improve, they need to look after the psychological well-being of their children too.
Ronald Fortune is the chief academic officer at Christel House South Africa, a nonprofit, no-fee school that has had a 98% matric pass rate average over the past five years.
Trade union Solidarity’s myth of Afrikaner suppression exposed:
The Afrikaner nationalist trade union’s visit to the United States has reignited debates about racial inequalities in our country.
Some commentators have invoked historical references and described it as the 21st century Great Trek. Trade union Solidarity has claimed that anti-white racism in post-apartheid South Africa informed its US visit. Leaders from this organisation cite racial redress legislation such as employment equity, broad-based black economic empowerment and land expropriation as key markers of ant-white or “reverse racism”.
Another argument articulated in the trade union’s policy advocacy is the emphasis on an Afrikaner economic empowerment model based on self-reliance, cultural-based collective work ethic, meritocracy and solidarity. This historical account is used to push back against any form of state intervention supporting socio-economic racial redress in the contemporary era.
In simple terms: Solidarity claims that 20th century Afrikaner economic empowerment was not supported by government intervention or any racialised socio-economic redress legislation. The political economy archives and researched policy evidence challenges this belief in several ways.
First, the apartheid state played a significant role in addressing long-standing socio-economic grievances articulated by Afrikaner nationalists when challenging British domination in the political economy. Professor Sampie Terreblanche explains that this government used quotas, selective procurement, import controls and industrial policy to advance an Afrikaner economic empowerment deal. In addition, state-owned enterprises were mandated to create job opportunities for the Afrikaner working class and allow selected companies enhanced access to state contracts. These interventionist measures challenge the narrative presented by Solidarity about Afrikaner economy history in South Africa.
Second, Dan O’Meara’s classic book, Volkskapitalisme, succinctly describes how Afrikaner working and capitalist class formation developed on the back of systemic appropriation of land and other natural resources. This point is salient for ongoing public policy debates about land reform and its relation to South Africa’s agrarian political economy.
Racial redress interventions such as land expropriation and redistribution are essential for transforming the country’s persistent racialised inequalities across the agro-food system. Yet Solidarity and other conservative groups suggest that these measures are market distortions and infringe on the economic liberties of white South Africans. This is astonishing because the empirical evidence proves that racialised redress was essential in uplifting the Afrikaner population’s development throughout the 20th century.
Third, labour market policy interventions in both private and public sectors assisted Afrikaners to obtain better wages and employment security. Political economy and labour studies literature sources illuminate this point across different industries in the 20th century. Professor Bernard Magubane’s work on the making of the racist state provides examples such as labour laws, job reservation policies and employee migration controls.
All these measures supported the creation of racialised hierarchies in labour markets, which privileged the interests of the Afrikaner working class. Additionally, the apartheid state developed one of the most extensive social protection programmes that included heavily subsidised housing, national health insurance and retirement savings. These programmes were linked with a racialised public service and goods provision system aimed at empowering Afrikaners.
Solidarity’s arguments about anti-white racism are based on economic history erasure. The trade union’s constituencies benefited from racialised industrial, labour and social policy market interventions. This call for no race-based socio-economic redress fortifies unequal race relations in South Africa. It draws on neo-liberal market fundamentalist principles such as liberalisation, privatisation and minimal state regulation. Solidarity weaponises these principles to impede government-led structural interventions aimed at obliterating racialised capitalism in South Africa.
The economic history erasure serves two fundamental purposes: overlooking historic socio-economic appropriation and delegitimising claims for socio-economic redress.
Dr Khwezi Mabasa is a part-time sociology lecturer at the University of Pretoria and Economic and Social Policy lead at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung South Africa.
Submit and get free exposure here: Showcase Your Business | Advertise Your Special Offers.
