Yum reporting version 'ZLIB_1.2.3.3' not found with MATLAB installed

Issue

• # yum commands are failing with version 'ZLIB_1.2.3.3' not found

# yum check-update
There was a problem importing one of the Python modules
required to run yum. The error leading to this problem was:

/lib64/libz.so.1: version `ZLIB_1.2.3.3' not found (required by /usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/bin/glnxa64/libxml2.so.2)

Please install a package which provides this module, or
verify that the module is installed correctly.

It's possible that the above module doesn't match the
current version of Python, which is:
2.6.6 (r266:84292, May 22 2015, 08:34:51) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-15)]