Helen Suzman

For 13 years from 1961 Suzman was the only Progressive Party member of South Africa's whites-only parliament, elected by affluent white voters in Houghton and spending her time attacking the laws most of them benefited from. She was the lone vote against the 1963 law allowing 90 days' detention without trial, used her right as an MP to visit prisons including Robben Island, and put detainees' treatment on the record. She also drew criticism from the anti-apartheid movement for opposing economic sanctions, and after 1994 she criticised the ANC government on rights as readily as she had the National Party.