He is a distinguished professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible—the bulk of his teaching and administrative career spent at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta—and has been a church minister for over fifty years.
His major publication is the book Yahweh's Emergence As "judge" Among the Gods: A Study of the Hebrew Root Špt.
Mafico was born on January 28, 1943, at Gwenzi in the Chipinge District, a remote part of Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia).
In 1968 he enrolled at the University of London Rhodesia campus, and in 1970 he graduated as the first Rhodesian pastor to earn a bachelor's degree majoring in religious studies and history.
He concurrently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
He introduced classical Hebrew into the curriculum, and mentored several students who are now scholars, such as Dora Mbuwayesango and Robert Wafawanaka.
From 2006 to 2010, Mafico directed a series of pilgrimages to the Holy Land for ecumenical groups of pastors sponsored by the Cousins Foundation.