The imposing façade is freshly painted, the hardwood floors and panelling are repaired and polished and the oil portraits of Cecil Rhodes, founder of colonial Rhodesia, dusted off. The Bulawayo Club, preserve of the white elite in pre-independence Zimbabwe, has become an unlikely beneficiary of the country’s stuttering economic recovery.

Although foreign investors are still wary of Zimbabwe’s continuing political uncertainty, local businesses, such as Amalinda Collection, the local tourist group behind the club’s refurbishment, are starting to commit capital. Phil Stead, managing director of Amalinda, says: “It is going to happen. If you have a good product you can make money here.” 

Zimbabwe’s seven-month-old coalition government – in which Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvan­girai’s Movement for Democratic Change are sharing power after a disputed general election – may still be fractious, but entrepreneurs such as Mr Stead are betting that the political settlement and currency stability – achieved when the local dollar was replaced by the US dollar and South African rand – have changed things fundamentally.  

Amalinda, which also owns two safari lodges, negotiated a lease to manage the 114-year-old gentlemen’s club in Bulawayo this year and are planning to manage it like a conventional hotel. Some $180,000 (€123,000, £109,000) has been invested; more will follow.

“The bottom fell out of this [tourism] market in a heartbeat at the end of the 1990s and it could recover just as quickly,” says Mr Stead. Recent weeks, he says, have been encouraging, with adventurous US tourists, mining company executives and European diplomats among those staying at the club.

The Bulawayo Club (above) is an unlikely beneficiary of the country’s stuttering recovery

Greater price stability and the opening of credit lines from South Africa are also presenting opportunities in other sectors. In a small town near Harare, an engineer, still too nervous to offer his name, recently returned with his family from abroad to invest tens of thousands in a cross-border business supplying imported merchandise.

“There is no way I would be back without these changes,” he says. “You know that when you wake up your money will have the same value as it had the night before. I know now I can go to the supermarket and buy milk and cereal for the kids.”  

The government is hoping this sense of opportunity will soon lure significant foreign investment, helping to exploit economically pivotal reserves of gold, platinum, chromium and diamonds. Both Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai were expected to address an event billed as the country’s biggest mining conference in Harare on Wednesday.

So far, though, investors themselves are cautious. At the Harare Stock Exchange, which reopened seven months ago, share prices have moved sideways, with as many investors choosing to realise gains as to take fresh positions.  

In the real economy, foreign businessmen are still concerned about restrictions and legal confusion. Vaguely worded indigenisation laws mean that foreign investors must cede a controlling stake to black empowerment groups. Change has been promised, with new mining legislation apparently under consideration. But for the moment groups such as South Africa’s Impala Platinum, already the biggest investor in Zimbabwean mining, are leaving multi-million-dollar investment plans on hold.

In spite of dollarisation, exchange controls remain on the statute book and Gideon Gono, the Zanu-PF politician who presided over the monetary chaos that led to Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, is still governor of the central bank. A long-awai­ted investment treaty with South Africa has still to be approved. 

The occupations of commercial farms owned by white farmers – which have continued since Mr Tsvangirai was inaugurated as prime minister in February – do not help business confidence. And as Sean Gammon of Imara, a  pan-African financial group, puts it: “There is still unease about the politics generally and how sustainable all this is.”