"I'm living my dream"

“I’m living my dream,” says Ms Anneli Kamfer (24), a student in the Certificate Programme in Music at Stellenbosch University (SU).

As recently as last year, Anneli was still at home in Swellendam deciding what to do with her future but these days she is a star in the making who is charming audiences at formal functions with her jazz singing.

Anneli is a member of the Gig Band, the music group that performed under the baton of conductor Philip Vermeulen (35) at SU’s 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards in Stellenbosch and Johannesburg.

“She has the voice of an angel,” Prof Russel Botman, Rector and Vice-Chancellor, lauded her from the podium.

Prof Arnold van Zyl, Vice-Rector: Research, heard her singing last year at a community-interaction function in Swellendam. “I realised she simply had to be helped to follow a career in music,” he says.

Through a bursary from the Swellendam Bursary Fund and additional financial aid from SU, Anneli has been realising her dream step-by-step for the past eight months.

“When I arrived here, I knew nothing. Now I can already read music quite well. I’m happy because I can study and perform,” she says.

“There’s a lot I still want to achieve and I know it’s going to take time, but I’m at the right place now.”

Amongst others, the Certificate Programme offers members of previously disadvantaged groups access to formal instruction in music. It serves as a springboard to the University’s degree and diploma programmes, says coordinator Ms Felicia Lesch.

Philip is an SU staff member who enrolled for the Certificate Programme in 2006, and is currently director of the Gig Band. He says: “When I look back at where I started, I sometimes can’t believe how far I have come. That’s why I like to help guide students.”

The other Certificate Programme members who performed at the Vice-Chancellor’s awards were Charl Clayton, Roché Europa and Ronald Siegelaar.