Her screams are loud and her anguish, her fear, are palpable.

Yet not a single light goes on down the street. Not a single person emerges to help her.

Inside the houses, people who have become cowardly turn over and mutter: "The police must help her. It is not our job to help her."

So a terrible deed, an offence to all of us, is perpetrated because, well, it is not my job or yours to stop it from happening.

In another part of South Africa, a young man is known to be a thug, a thief who terrorises his neighbourhood with impunity.

Everyone knows this young man. He grew up in front of them. Now he hijacks cars. He beats up people. One day, trying to elude the police, he runs over a local child. Everyone is outraged. They forget that they let the monster grow. It was not their job to stand up and stop it.

Last week, Dumisa Ntsebeza, on behalf of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, wrote to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and asked him to "announce unequivocally to the nation that a visa would be granted to His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and that he was free to travel to South Africa immediately".

The letter was written after Motlanthe was quoted as saying South Africa would have granted the Dalai Lama a visa had he not decided to cancel his trip to South Africa.

Motlanthe's spokesman, Thabo Masebe, responded to inquiries about Ntsebeza's letter by saying: "I have just read that letter and we cannot do anything with it.

"It says the deputy president must make an 'unequivocal statement that the Dalai Lama will get a visa'. But the deputy president does not get involved in the processing of visas and he is not going to get involved. So we are unable to do anything about that letter."

Wow. So it is not Motlanthe's job to stop an act of injustice? It is not his job to lead ethically and morally? It is not his job to stand up and stop rot from taking over a government led by the party of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli?

It is not his job. So let the image of this country be soiled.

Poor Motlanthe. I do not blame him for washing his hands of the Dalai Lama decision.

"It is not my job" has become a part of the culture of this country. The concept of "how can I help you" went out the window a long time ago.

Visit a government office and you will find civil servants standing about, waiting to "do their jobs".

In the meantime, old men and women will be standing waiting for service that does not come.

Often, they are sent back home. The reason? "The person who does 'that job' is not around today."

We do not pick up litter in our own streets, preferring to live in dirty neighbourhoods. We do not stand up for the frail in buses.

We do not intervene when people steal right in front of us. It is not our job.

We do our jobs, though.

Remember our new Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng? He has always liked "doing his job".

Way back in 1988 he was allocated a case in which he had to defend the death penalty.

This is what he told the nation recently: "When an urgent application for the stay of execution in the matter before came Theal Stewart CJ, my boss, Advocate JJ Smit SC, assigned the duty to oppose the application to me, and I did.

"At the time the death penalty had not yet been abolished. It was the law. The new constitution did not exist. More importantly, [the] Makwanyane [case] had not yet been decided in favour of abolishing the death penalty."

Mogoeng Mogoeng did his job. He spoke up for the heinous death penalty.

Over the past week I have heard Tokyo Sexwale, Angie Motshekga and other members of our cabinet essentially saying it was not their job to stand up and say the Dalai Lama should be allowed into South Africa. Not once did they say they would speak to their cabinet colleagues about this shameful affair.

They all looked elsewhere and hoped the problem would go away.

These men and women of our cabinet have behaved pretty much the way the Mogoeng Mogoengs of this world behaved under apartheid. They have ignored a scream of distress in the night.

They have chosen to turn a blind eye to an injustice taking place right in front of them,

One can only hope that they are proud of their jobs.