At the Annual General Meeting of the Society held in Fort Beaufort in November 2006, the previous council presented the strategic action plan for the society which had been developed at a workshop held in July of that year. Changes to the constitution to accommodate the implementation of this plan were also presented, and both proposals were unanimously accepted by the members present at the meeting.

It has been a priority of the new council to pursue the implementation of this strategic plan in the face of increasing work load pressure (since the “bosberaad” of July 2006, membership of the society has increased by 60%). During this time, our office has maintained the same staffing levels, and hence our decision to appoint a manager to co-ordinate workload priorities. What we find disturbing, as council, is that many of our initiatives, including proper resourcing of the office, are subject to ongoing challenge by longer standing members of the society who were, in fact, party to the development of the strategic plan in the first instance. Unfortunately, much of this rhetoric is directed at our office staff, thereby aggravating the stress under which they work.

One of the elements of our strategy, concerns refining the interface between clubs and the society. In our most recent news brief, we report on the outcomes of a workshop held to deal with this matter. These outcomes are now being criticized by some of the participants (a small minority) who were party to their development, and who are now broadly seeking support for their revised views amongst other society members.

Further concerns to us, are the ongoing observations that none of the members of council are senior inspectors. We need to point out that these skills are firmly resident in our technical sub-committee, and that at the level of council we need to direct an organization which supports a multi-million rand investment on the part of our members. This is more about managing the increasing complexity of society business than judging cattle.