swig bindings can't find SubversionException

trying to open an non existant repository, illustrates that somehow the swig 
bindings can't find its exception class.

 File "/Users/kapil/software/subversion/lib/python/svn/repos.py", line 55, in 
svn_repos_open
    return apply(_repos.svn_repos_open, args)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'SubversionException'

Original issue reported by hazmat