You will see that there are some features which could be called as A-B-A polygons. It means that they have been defined as polygons and they have three vertises but only two distinct points, A and B. The polygon starts from A, goes to B and then comes back to A. On a map it looks like a short line. They are not real polygons, for example they have zero areas, and I believe that most systems consider those are topologically invalid but Mapnik does not care.