Peter McKenzie Brown (24 December 1924 – 2004) was a founding member of the Liberal Party of South Africa and succeeded Alan Paton as its national chairman in 1958.
Following World War II he began studies in agriculture at Cambridge, which he left in his first year after being inspired by South African writer Peter Abrahams to return home.
Back in South Africa, he studied African languages, becoming fluent in Zulu, and Native Law and Administration at the University of Cape Town.
In the early hours of 29 March 1960, 10 days after the Sharpeville massacre, police raided the homes of leading LP members and arrested 20 people, including Brown.
After attending an LP National Executive meeting in Johannesburg on 25 July 1964, Brown was served a five-year banning order in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act.
Practical in his liberalism, Brown’s mobilizing of opposition to the forced removal of blacks from urban areas and farms made him a target of the apartheid state.
Two leading South African liberals, Alan Paton and Edgar Brookes, showed their appreciation of Brown in an LP internal statement at the time: "although we lack many of the gifts and advantages enjoyed by our banned National Chairman" they asked Liberals "to hold to the course we have always thought right and give us your encouragement and support" as the only way “to show our appreciation of what our National Chairman was, and is" (Vigne, 1997: 190).
In 1979 the Association for Rural Advancement (Afra) was formed by him in response to apartheid forced removals and farm labour evictions, and he chaired it for 11 years.