 <p>You don't instantiate <code>ConfigParser</code> when you assign it to the <code>self.scfgs</code> or <code>self.cfg</code> attributes; so when you then call <code>read</code> on it, you're calling an unbound method via the class, rather than a method on the instance.</p> <p>It should be:</p> <pre><code>self.cfg = ConfigParser() </code></pre> <p>etc</p>