PhD for 79-year-old graduate
Ossie Kretzmann attained his PhD in Theology during UKZN’s Spring Graduation Ceremonies.
FOR Dr Ossie Kretzmannwill it’s never too late to start something new or take your life to new heights. Kretzman is a walking example after having attained his PhD in Theology during UKZN’s Spring graduation ceremonies, at the ripe age of 79 years.
“I feel humble but deeply fulfilled and grateful. It’s a paradoxical feeling that I have. While the study has been long and hard, it has also given me joy over the acquisition of new knowledge. I also realised how little I know,” he added.
Kretzmann, the oldest graduate from the College of Humanities and who also ministered the late statesman, Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, said his age did not deter him from pursuing his degree as he needed to study to make a fundamental contribution to a theological issue in the Methodist Church.
Kretzmann is grateful to God, his wife Deirdre, children, and especially supervisors Prof Lilian Siwila and Dr Helen Keith-van Wyk for their indispensable part in the study.
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“An old dog may not be able to learn new tricks, but with their assistance I have come to see that all things are possible at any stage of life,” said Kretzmann.
Kretzmann was born in 1939 in Potsdam near East London, into a German farming community. Because of financial constraints caused by the economic depression of the 1930s, a series of droughts, and the loss of a herd of milk cows, his father was compelled to remove him and his siblings from school as they could legally earn a living. At the age of 15, he was employed as a delivery boy. At 19, he requested to enter the fulltime ministry of the Methodist Church. He become a lay preacher, and later earned a BA degree in 1968, a BA Honours in 1982, a Master’s degree in 2012 and now, a PhD.
Among the highlights of his ministry were the monthly visits to Robben Island between 1970 and 1971 where he regularly ministered to former president Nelson Mandela among the hundreds of other political prisoners.
He gives credit to his parents, especially his mother, for saving his life after contracting diphtheria – a bacterial infection that affects the mucous membranes of the throat and nose – at two years old.
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