Ignatius Mabasa is a holder of a PhD in African Languages from Rhodes University, SA. His PhD is the first ever PhD to be written in the Shona language. He is an award winning Shona writer with four novels to date. His novels have been ZIMSEC set textbooks including the fourth Oxford University Press published Ziso rezongororo which is currently being studied as an A’ Level Shona set text.

Ignatius lectures at the University of Zimbabwe in the Department of Creative Media and Communication. He is a versatile content creator, storyteller, essayist and Shona language expert who is on the National Languages Advisory Committee set up by the Government of Zimbabwe to come up with a National Languages Bill. For two years he produced a Ngano radio show on StarFM. In 2017 His Shona film titled Chipo neChipopayi won the Zimbabwe International Film Festival’s Best Short Film Award. He won ZW$2 million for his Digital Ngano project during the 2022 University of Zimbabwe’s Research, Innovation and Industrialisation Week.

Ignatius has been a teaching Fulbright Scholar in the USA. He represented Zimbabwe at the 2009 San Francisco International Poetry Festival. He participated in the translation of the Bible Society’s Shona Study Bible. He also was part of the Shona team that translated the Constitution. Currently he was chosen to translate President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s biography from English into Shona.