Durban - It is “never too late to start something new or take your life to new heights”, said 79-year-old Dr Ossie Kretzmann yesterday shortly before attaining his PhD in theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Spring Graduation ceremony.
“I feel humble, but deeply fulfilled and grateful,” he said. “It’s a paradoxical feeling. 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.”
Kretzmann, who ministered to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, was the oldest graduate from the College of Humanities.
He said his age did not deter him from pursuing his degree as he needed to make a contribution to a theological issue in the Methodist Church.
His study looked at baptismal convergence in relation to sacramental baptism and re-baptism.
Kretzmann is grateful to God, his wife Deirdre, his children and especially his supervisors Professor Lilian Siwila and Dr Helen Keith-van Wyk for their indispensable part in his studies.
“An old dog might 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, who believed God was using him to contribute towards the enhancement of the redemptive mission of Christ in the Methodist Church through the study of water baptism as well as in the promotion of Christian Ecumenism.
He was born into a German farming community in 1939 in Potsdam near East London. Due to financial constraints caused by the economic depression of the 1930s, droughts and the loss of a herd of milk cows, his father removed him and his siblings from school as they could legally earn a living.
At age 15, he was employed as a delivery boy and at 19 he requested to enter the full-time ministry of the Methodist Church. He became a lay preacher and attained his 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 visits to Robben Island for two years (1970-1971) where he ministered to Mandela and other political prisoners; attending the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976; being part of the World Conference on the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem Israel (1974); and in 2009, being invited back into the Lutheran Church to do locum work.
Kretzmann gives credit to his parents, especially his mother, for saving his life when he was 2 years old after he contracted diphtheria.