Despite the South African government's desire to encourage economic growth via SME growth, attempts to ameliorate the difficulties encountered by SMEs are often hindered by a lack of resources, one of which is business incubation. This paper employs a descriptive literature review to declutter the varying concerns of SME growth and development from the narratives around the role of business incubators (BIs) and the government. This, we believe, would provide clarity on the challenges faced by SMEs development in South Africa by filtering the roles of both BIs and the government. Descriptive literature review as a qualitative technique helps to reveal an interpretable pattern in the current literature and was thus employed in this study. Even while the literature points to the importance of SMEs in economic growth, their volatility makes them an unreliable partner for the South African government currently. This is because the literature suggests that the government is failing them in one way or the other through limited and failed support systems. Because of their excessive reliance on government funding, BIs cannot help SMEs as they should because of the lack of funding. Consequently, one might argue that the & quot; law of unintended consequences," or the unexpected repercussions of government policies and actions/inactions, hinder South Africa's government from achieving its objectives. We flag some implications and future research directions in our closing arguments.