Password protection system for web app

[Jegenye 2001 Bt]

Could someone please suggest a very lightweight solution for protecting
directories on a web server? (membership system)

The job is basically this:
An administrator, after logging in via the web, should have the ability to
add/remove users who then could access their own password protected
directories only with their
browsers.

I know this could be easily done with Zope (I know that) and probably with
many other fully blown web application servers like Webware, etc.  of which
there are many.
But now all I need  some CGI hacks since I don't want to deploy something
heavier that that.

I've searched on www.python.org and Google but I haven't found much.

I found some Perl solutions, which work .htaccess files, and PHP thingies,
but I'd really like to hack on Python scripts but not on this part...
Either HTTP basic authentication or cookie based authentication would do.

Thanks in advance,

Miklós