Here's a fun way to create a list of such lists:
>>> n = 7
>>> a = n*[0] + [1, 0, 2, 0, 1] + [0]*n
>>> [a[-i+n+2:-i+2*n+2] for i in xrange(n)]
[[2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0],
[0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0],
[0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1],
[0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2]]