The riots began in early May 1992. They started at the David Whitehead Textile Factory in Ndirande, a densely populated township in Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi. When their demands for higher wages and better terms of service were ignored, workers resolved to occupy the plant until management would speak to them. This began on the night of May 5, when the night shift remained in the factory as the graveyard shift arrived. In the morning, the managing director, an expatriate, refused to meet with workers. Instead he called the Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP), a kind of paramilitary arm of the ruling Malawi Congress Party (MCP). Vehicles carrying armed MYP members soon arrived and entered the plant, where violence was met with violence. Over the next few hours and days, hostilities spilled out of the factory and into neighboring Ndirande (a large periurban village between Blantyre and Limbe towns). Rioting and looting spread to Blantyre and Limbe proper, and its character demonstrated that this was not simply mob action based on bread and butter issues. Middle- and working-class “pillagers” targeted specific businesses, in particular, the People's Trading Company, Bergers, and Chipiku Stores, all establishments associated with Life President Doctor Hastings Kamuzu Banda's consortium, Press Industries. And in some places like Ndirande, crowds not only looted but burned the very buildings that housed these enterprises. One Ndirande resident whose grocery shared the same premises as Press-controlled Chipiku Stores was politely asked to vacate his shop.