Python has encapsulation - you are using it in your class.

What it doesn't have is access control such as private and protected attributes. However, in Python, there is an attribute naming convention to denote private attributes by prefixing the attribute with one or two underscores, e.g:

self._a
self.__a 

A single underscore indicates to the user of a class that an attribute should be considered private to the class, and should not be accessed directly.

A double underscore indicates the same, however, Python will mangle the attribute name somewhat to attempt to hide it.

class C(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.a = 123    # OK to access directly
        self._a = 123   # should be considered private
        self.__a = 123  # considered private, name mangled

>>> c = C()
>>> c.a
123
>>> c._a
123
>>> c.__a
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'C' object has no attribute '__a'
>>> c._C__a
123

You can see in the last example that the name was changed from __a to _C__a, although it is still accessible within the class as self.__a.