Last month the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe rightly won the elections. Yet, Mugabe is still in power. Zimbabwe is in a grim state. Its one chance to fix the problem is gone—because democracy is the only way to fix Africa, right?

Over 3,000 miles to the north, two weeks ago Egyptians also went to the polls. At least, 3 percent of them did. In this election a brutal Islamist group was kept from getting power. How? Through the brutal acts of a dictator.

Democracy is spoken of as an absolute good—so much so, in fact, that in its everyday usage it has almost lost all meaning other than as a statement of approval.

“In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides,” wrote George Orwell. “It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: Consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”

The starvation, hiv/aids epidemic, and violence in Zimbabwe is well known. Many saw the March elections as a chance to change all that. The Zimbabwean people had a chance to oust Mugabe. The problem is, he doesn’t want to go.

Egypt pretends to be a democracy. It held municipal elections earlier this month. With almost all the candidates for the popular Muslim Brotherhood (MB) either locked up or unable to participate, only 3 percent of the population bothered to go out and vote. The government violently forbids any kind of protests or demonstrations. Forty percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and many are starving.

Would democracy fix Egypt? A truly democratic election would lead to the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the Anti-Defamation League (adl),

The Muslim Brotherhood no longer openly conducts terrorist operations; it is primarily a political organization that supports terrorism and terrorist causes. Many of its members, however, have engaged in terrorist activities and the group has spawned numerous terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

The Brotherhood is a suspect in two major attacks listed by the adl: a 2002 suicide bombing in Grozny, Chechnya, and a 1979 attack on a Syrian military academy in Aleppo in which 50 Syrian artillery cadets were killed.

After the death of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin several years ago, the MB’s leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said, “There can be no life for the Americans and Zionists in the region. We will not rest until they [Israelis] are expelled from the region.”

A draft political platform the MB published last September forbids Christians and women from holding the presidential office and establishes a board of Muslim clerics to oversee the government.

According to the adl, the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal is “establishing theocracy in Egypt, the Middle East, ultimately worldwide.”

To say that an Egyptian government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood would not be good for peace in the Middle East would be an understatement. Yet this is what would happen if Egypt were a democracy.

What about the plight of the Egyptian people? Would that be improved under the Muslim Brotherhood? It is unlikely. Hamas, the MB’s Palestinian daughter, has only made life worse for its people.

Historian Michael Oren calculates that since the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian Authority “has garnered more international aid than any entity in modern history—more per capita than the European states under the Marshall Plan.” Yet the Palestinians are still some of the poorest people in the world. MB-type governments have not been good for their citizens throughout the Middle East.

It is Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship that has stopped a radical MB party from dominating the government. Democracy won’t fix Egypt. It will only make things worse.

It is almost universally recognized in the Western world that dictatorships are bad. Zimbabwe is a clear example of where dictatorships lead. But if democracy is not enough to fix Egypt, will it be enough to fix other nations?

Consider the 1991-92 elections in Algeria—the Arab world’s only truly free elections to that point. Islamic parties won the first round by a landslide. Feeling threatened, the military annulled the election (with U.S. approval), leading to years of virtual civil war in the country. The military-backed regime has preserved a facade of democracy, all the while locking out the Islamists from the political process. This is exactly what governments like Egypt and Turkey are trying to do. Democracy would bring Islamic militants to power.

Winston Churchill famously said that “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.”

In a way, civilization has been one long search for the perfect form of government. Author Douglas Adams summed up the situation in his own way:

It is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. … Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. … Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

And there’s the paradox. A dictatorship leads to Zimbabwe. Democracy can lead to Hamas.

Democracy has repeatedly failed throughout Africa and compounded problems in the Middle East. In fact, its flaws can be seen all over the world (see our article “Democracy on Trial.”)

If a dictatorship doesn’t work, and democracy doesn’t work, is there any way for man to rule man? The shocking answer is no! Democracy will fail. It won’t fix Zimbabwe, or any place in Africa. Man is incapable of solving these problems.

Does that mean there is no hope? Certainly not. There is a far greater kind of government, a form of government no nation has tried. It does not involve man ruling man. The solution: God ruling man!

After mankind has finally and conclusively proved to itself that its ways of government will not work, God’s form of government will be established over the entire Earth. There is no hope in man’s governments. Their collapse actually leads right into God’s perfect government ruling the world. To learn more about this government, read our booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like.