In this article the authors present a critical and alternative view of the reasons for and nature of professionalism in nursing, with particular reference to the South African situation. They show that professionalizing strategies have not necessarily been in the interests of the majority of nurses or of health care. First, some background information is given on the process of professionalization: its emergence worldwide and in South Africa, partly as a response of a predominantly female group to the power, prestige, and privilege held in the health sector by a predominantly male medical profession. The process in South African nursing is outlined, with particular emphasis on how this has paralleled political developments in South Africa. The proletarianization of a large body of nurses is examined as a contradictory trend to professionalization. The second part of the article is an analysis of the consequences of the professionalization process, which has had deleterious effects on the provision of health care as well as on relationships amongst nurses, their colleagues, and their communities.