import matplotlib.pyplot as plt in shell returns UnicodeDecodeError

From the python shell under open suse

Python 2.7.5 (default, May 30 2013, 16:55:57) [GCC] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

returns the following. Any help appreciated.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/pyplot.py", line 24, in <module>
    import matplotlib.colorbar
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/colorbar.py", line 29, in <module>
    import matplotlib.collections as collections
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/collections.py", line 23, in <module>
    import matplotlib.backend_bases as backend_bases
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backend_bases.py", line 50, in <module>
    import matplotlib.textpath as textpath
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/textpath.py", line 11, in <module>
    import matplotlib.font_manager as font_manager
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 1356, in <module>
    _rebuild()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 1341, in _rebuild
    fontManager = FontManager()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 1004, in __init__
    self.ttflist = createFontList(self.ttffiles)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 584, in createFontList
    prop = ttfFontProperty(font)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py", line 398, in ttfFontProperty
    sfnt4 = sfnt4.decode('ascii').lower()
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xaa in position 7: ordinal not in range(128)