This will get you the system version information that yum knows about.

{{{

# Directly... NOTE that this disregards some yum specific information (and assumes redhat-release):
pkg_provide = "redhat-release"
import rpm

ts = rpm.TransactionSet()
# This can throw exceptions, depending on rpm version, have fun... :)
idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', pkg_provide)
if idx.count() == 0:
    releasever = '$releasever'
else:
    hdr = idx.next()
    releasever = hdr['version']
print '$releasever =', releasever

# Via. yum
import yum
yb = yum.YumBase()
yb.conf
print '$releasever =', yb.yumvar['releasever']

}}}