Python's time.strptime() behavior is consistent with that of glibc 2.19:

======= strptime_c.c =======
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <time.h>

int
main(void)
{
  struct tm tm;
  char buf[255];

  memset(&tm, 0, sizeof(struct tm));
  strptime("Feb 29", "%b %d", &tm);
  strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d %b %Y %H:%M", &tm);
  puts(buf);
  exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
=======

$ gcc strptime_c.c 
$ ./a.out
29 Feb 1900 00:00


I'm not saying that the behavior is a good API, but given the unfortunate API at hand, parsing a date without specifying what year it is using strptime is a bad idea.