In 2000, South Africa implemented a levy-grant policy (Skills Development Levies Act, 1999) to give an incentive for workplace training across private and public sector workplaces alike, but the impact of the levy-grant scheme in the public sector was restricted by financial and management processes unique to that environment. This article shows how factors not anticipated by the legislation strongly influenced the impact of the levy-grant scheme. For example, non-training-specific policies intended to govern the behaviour of line managers strongly influenced training activity. In the future, leveraging training potential in the South African public service requires concerted intergovernmental collaboration across the line function boundaries between labour and the public service. (Contains 4 notes.)